Abstract
Abrupt climatic events and the history of human activities on Hainan Island are poorly understood, due to the lack of high-resolution records. We present high-resolution multiproxy records from the coastal shelf off eastern Hainan Island in China to investigate abrupt climate change and regional human–environment interaction over the last 7,000 years. A prominent climatic anomaly occurred during 5,400–4,900 cal yr BP. This abrupt monsoon failure has been detected in various paleoclimatic records from monsoonal regions. Anomalous summer monsoon intensity during 5,400–4,900 cal yr BP is probably driven by solar variability, ENSO activity and ice-rafting events in the North Atlantic. Over the past 1,500 years, with the growing population and progress in production technology, human activity has increasingly become the dominant factor controlling the natural environment of Hainan Island.
Highlights
Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent owing to global warming, and people are increasingly concerned about climate change and its impacts on their lives
Previous studies have confirmed that El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) may act as a mediator between solar energy input and the Asian summer monsoon (Asmerom et al, 2007; Emile-Geay et al, 2007; Marchitto et al, 2010). These results suggest a link between East Asia, the tropical Pacific and the North Atlantic: a potential forcing mechanism for abrupt climate change is that solar variability can affect the Asian summer monsoon via the North Atlantic and the ENSO system
The prominent climatic anomaly during 5,400–4,900 cal yr BP is observed, which is coincides with a dramatic weakening of the summer monsoon. This abrupt event is synchronous with a period of weak solar activity, strong El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) activity and North Atlantic ice-rafting
Summary
Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent owing to global warming, and people are increasingly concerned about climate change and its impacts on their lives. Over recent Earth history, several abrupt global climatic anomalies occurred during the Holocene (Bond et al, 2001; Mayewski et al, 2004; Wanner et al, 2011). Climatic anomaly around 5,500 cal yr BP have recently received attention as a result of the close linkage between climate change and the evolution of prehistoric culture (Shuman, 2012; Bai et al, 2017; Wu et al, 2018; Hou and Wu, 2021; Tan et al, 2020). A detailed understanding of abrupt climatic events in the past is critical for exploring their underlying forcing mechanisms and dealing with abrupt changes in the climate system in the future.
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