Abstract
It has been proposed that the northeastern Tibetan Plateau (NETP) was the most recent plateau sub-region to gain elevation, leading to profound environmental changes in northern East Asia around the mid-Pliocene (ca. 3.6 Ma). Alternatively, environmental changes in the region have been linked to ongoing global cooling and glacial intensification after 3.3 Ma. Here, we test these hypotheses using Plio-Pleistocene estimates of paleotemperatures and paleoelevations in the NETP derived from oxygen and carbon stable isotopic composition (n = 792) and clumped isotope measurements (n = 32) of carbonates from a Lake Qinghai Basin sediment core, eastern NETP. From 5 to 2 Ma, basinal mean annual air temperatures (MAATs) decreased by 4.9 ± 2.8 °C at rates of 1.6 °C ± 0.5 °C/myr, concurrently with regional and global cooling. However, the largest MAAT decline occurs between ca. 4.8−3.7 Ma (4.1 ± 3.2 °C) and ca. 3.4−2.0 Ma (−0.3 ± 2.8 °C) and may correspond with an elevation change of 1.0 ± 1.0 km at 3.6 Ma, coincident with tectonic activity in the Lake Qinghai Basin and several other basins in the NETP and its foreland. Taken together, these results suggest a combination of global cooling and a small magnitude of surface uplift (<1 km) at ca. 3.6 Ma may have contributed to the regional evolution of climate in the Lake Qinghai Basin.
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