Seasonal drought events in tropical East Asia over the last 60,000 y.

Jianping Zhang, Houyuan Lu, Jiwei Jia, Caiming Shen, Shuyun Wang, Guoqiang Chu, Luo Wang, Anning Cui, Jiaqi Liu, Naiqin Wu, Fengjiang Li

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2020 Dec 08

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The cause of seasonal hydrologic changes in tropical East Asia during interstadial/stadial oscillations of the last glaciation remains controversial. Here, we show seven seasonal drought events that occurred during the relatively warm interstadials by phytolith and pollen records. These events are significantly manifested as high percentages of bilobate phytoliths and are consistent with the large zonal sea-surface temperature (SST) gradient from the western to eastern tropical Pacific, suggesting that the reduction in seasonal precipitation could be interpreted by westward shifts of the western Pacific subtropical high triggered by changes of zonal SST gradient over the tropical Pacific and Hadley circulation in the Northern Hemisphere. Our findings highlight that both zonal and meridional ocean-atmosphere circulations, rather than solely the Intertropical Convergence Zone or El Niño-Southern Oscillation, controlled the hydrologic changes in tropical East Asia during the last glaciation.

Citation

Jianping Zhang, Houyuan Lu, Jiwei Jia, Caiming Shen, Shuyun Wang, Guoqiang Chu, Luo Wang, Anning Cui, Jiaqi Liu, Naiqin Wu, Fengjiang Li. Seasonal drought events in tropical East Asia over the last 60,000 y. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2020 Dec 08;117(49):30988-30992