Holocene high-resolution quantitative summer temperature reconstruction based on subfossil chironomids from the southeast margin of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

Abstract

This paper reports the first quantitative summer (mean July) temperature reconstruction based on subfossil chironomids from the southeast margin of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP) covering the end of the last deglaciation and the entire Holocene, spanning 11,800 cal yr BP to the present. The record is based on 223 chironomid samples throughout a 927 cm sediment core providing a temporal resolution of ∼50 years per sample. We validate the record by applying several statistical reconstruction diagnostics and comparing with pollen and diatom records from the same sediment core. The record suggests the summer temperature varies by ∼2.5 °C across the entire period. A generally warmer period occurred between c.8500 and c.6000 cal yr BP and a cooling trend was initiated from c.5500 cal yr BP. The overall pattern broadly matches the summer insolation at 30°N and the Asian Summer Monsoon records from the surrounding regions suggesting that summer temperatures from the southeast margin of the QTP respond to insolation forcing and monsoon driven variability on a multi-millennial time scale. Modifications of this overall trend are observed on the finer temporal resolution and we suggest that solar activity could be an important mechanism driving the centennial-scale variability. It may have a strengthened effect in the late Holocene when the monsoon influence weakened. Further detailed investigation is needed to disentangle these effects on the climate change over the highlands of southwestern China.