Radiocarbon dating of the Pleistocene/Holocene climatic transition across the Chinese Loess Plateau

Abstract

Abstract The magnetic susceptibility (MS) of Chinese loess deposits is extensively used to reconstruct climate changes from centennial to earth orbital time scales. The approach assumes that the MS is sensitive to the variations of the Asian Summer Monsoon (ASM), and thus that changes in MS are synchronous across the Chinese Loess Plateau. However, this inference has not been fully confirmed due to the limitations of both chronological control of Chinese loess sequences and the climatic proxies of the ASM. Here, we present the results of radiocarbon dating of the shifts in the oxygen isotopic composition of fossil land snail shells (δ 18 O s ) and in MS during the Pleistocene/Holocene transition at various sites in Chinese Loess Plateau. The results show that the age of shift in MS at Pleistocene/Holocene transition at Mangshan, Heshui, and Huanxian sections is 10.43 ka, 8.55 ka, and 7.13 ka BP, respectively. Thus, the shift is time-transgressive with age decreasing from southeast to northwest across the plateau. However, the δ 18 O s record, which is directly related to the precipitation delivered by the ASM, is not significantly time-transgressive, indicating that the ASM strengthened almost simultaneously across the plateau. We suggest that the time-transgressive nature of the shifts in MS may result from the low amplitude of the ASM strengthening during the Pleistocene/Holocene transition. Overall, our results demonstrate a regional difference in the insensitivity of MS to low amplitude climatic changes, and they challenge the previously-held assumption that the ages of climatic boundary based on MS stratigraphy are time-equivalent in Chinese loess.