Paleogeography control of Indian monsoon intensification and expansion at 41 Ma

Abstract

As a crucial part of the Asian monsoon stretching from tropical India to temperate East Asia, the Indian monsoon (IM) contributes predominant precipitation over Asian continent. However, our understanding of IM’s onset, development and the underlying driving mechanisms is limited. Increasing evidence indicates that the IM began in the Eocene or even the Paleocene and was unexceptionally linked to the early rise of the Tibetan Plateau (TP). These were challenged by the heterogeneous and diachronous uplift of the TP and all the reported records were confined to tropical zone under tropical monsoon driven by the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) that is irrelevant to the TP. Therefore, reliable paleoclimatic records from the extra-tropical IM region is crucial to reveal how the tropical IM expanded to subtropical and temperate zones and what driving factors might be related to it. Here we present robust Eocene paleoenvironmental records from central Yunnan (~26°N) in subtropical East Asia. The multiproxy results of two sites demonstrate a consistent sudden switch from a dry environment in the early Eocene to a seasonally wet one at 41 Ma, suggesting a jump of the tropical IM to the southern subtropical zone at 41 Ma. The full collision of India with Asia, and the resulting changes in paleogeography at 41 Ma (closure of the Neotethys sea, retreat of the Paratethys seas, fast northward movement of the southern margin of the TP and rise of the central TP), aided by synchronous Antarctic cooling, might have worked together to drive the IM enhancement and northward expansion.