NOAA National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service National Climatic Data Center, U.S. Department of Commerce
World Data Center for Paleoclimatology, NCDC Paleoclimatology Branch
 
Paleoclimatology Navigation Bar
NOAA National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NOAA National Climatic Data Center U.S. Department of Commerce Paleo Home Research Data Education What's New Features Paleo Perspectives Site Map
PALEOLIMNOLOGY

Influence of the intertropical convergence zone on the East Asian monsoon
Map of data site
Yancheva, G., N.R. Nowaczyk, J. Mingram, P. Dulski, G. Schettler, J.F.W. Negendank, J. Liu, D.M. Sigman, L.C. Peterson, G.H. Haug. 2007. Influence of the intertropical convergence zone on the East Asian monsoon. Nature Vol 445, pp. 74-77, 4 January 2007
Data Coverage North: 21.15 * South: 21.15
West: 110.283 * East: 110.283
Altitude: 23 m

Start Year: 16453 cal yr BP * End Year: 102 cal yr BP

Data:     Please Cite Data Contributors!
  Text: asia/china/huguang-maar2007.txt
  Excel: asia/china/huguang-maar2007.xls

Summary:

The Asian-Australian monsoon is an important component of the Earth's climate system that influences the societal and economic activity of roughly half the world's population. The past strength of the rain-bearing East Asian summer monsoon can be reconstructed with archives such as cave deposits, but the winter monsoon has no such signature in the hydrological cycle and has thus proved difficult to reconstruct. Here we present high- resolution records of the magnetic properties and the titanium content of the sediments of Lake Huguang Maar in coastal southeast China over the past 16,000 years, which we use as proxies for the strength of the winter monsoon winds. We find evidence for stronger winter monsoon winds before the Bølling-Allerød warming, during the Younger Dryas episode and during the middle and late Holocene, when cave stalagmites suggest weaker summer monsoons. We conclude that this anticorrelation is best explained by migrations in the intertropical convergence zone. Similar migrations of the intertropical convergence zone have been observed in Central America for the period AD 700 to 900, suggesting global climatic changes at that time. From the coincidence in timing, we suggest that these migrations in the tropical rain belt could have contributed to the declines of both the Tang dynasty in China and the Classic Maya in Central America.
More Info on Paleolimnology

Complete XML Record:

noaa-lake-5450  (Last Revised: 2007-09-05 )

NOAA logo DOC/NOAA/NESDIS/NCDC (National Climatic Data Center, NESDIS, NOAA, U.S. Department of Commerce )
325 Broadway, E/CC23
Boulder, CO 80305
USA
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/
E-mail: bruce.a.bauer@noaa.gov
E-mail: paleo@noaa.gov
Phone: 303-497-6280
Fax: 303-497-6513