Synthesis of stalagmite climatic records in southern China during the last glacial-interglacial cycle

Abstract

In this study, a 140 kyr stack (MT2022) of 95 stalagmite δ18O records from Southern China was synthesized using the error weighted mean method and the linear weighted mean method. This stack record was derived from approximately 1100 U/Th dating and 40000 δ18O data points. On orbital scale, MT2022 agrees with the variation of the summer (21 July) insolation at 65°N and restores as much detail as possible of the actual variability of Asian Summer Monsoon (ASM) from stalagmite records. The age model of MT2022 was established according to the dating results of each sample record, and the start and end periods of each weak monsoon event were constrained by at least five stalagmite sample records, with average errors of less than 0.2 kyr. By comparison, we find that MT2022 was generally consistent with the Speleothem Interstadial Onset Compilation data set (SIOC19) and had more sample records from the ASM domain, which is more suitable to represent the ASM evolution. Furthermore, comparing MT2022 to three Greenland ice core timescales, we discovered that MT2022 was quite consistent with NGRIP (GICC05) over the last 60 kyr and differed from GRIP (ss09sea) and GISP2 (Meese-Sowers). The main discrepancy between MT2022 and GRIP occurs around Dansgaard-Oeschger (DO) events 14 and 20–23, whereas MT2022 and GISP2 start to deviate prominently beyond 40 kyr BP. The high degree of consistency between GICC05 and MT2022 allows their accuracy to be validated against each other, thus, MT2022 may provide a new chronological reference for climatic events in the last glacial-interglacial cycle as well as an age calibration standard for other palaeoclimate archives.