XU Hai1, SHENG En-guo1,2, LAN Jiang-hu1, LIU Bin1, YU Ke-ke1,2
1. State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi'an 710075, China;
2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
Abstract: Knowledge of the climatic changes during the past 2,000 years along the eastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau (ETP) is critical in understanding both regional and global climatic dynamics. Here we study climatic changes along the ETP transect on the basis of the limnological records and evidences from other studies. Our results showed a striking hydroclimatic contrast between the north ETP area (N-ETP) and the south ETP area (S-ETP). The climate in the N-ETP area shows a "warm wet-cold dry" pattern, e.g., warm-wet medieval period, cold-dry Little Ice Age (LIA), and warm-wet modern/recent epoch. On the other hand, the climate in the S-ETP area follows a "warm dry-cold wet" pattern, e.g., warm-dry medieval period, cold-wet LIA, and warm-dry modern/recent epoch. Comparisons showed that the climatic pattern in the N-ETP area is similar to that in the East Asian summer monsoon area; while the climatic pattern in the S-ETP area is similar to that in the most part of the Indian summer monsoon area. Our hypotheses is that the large scale hydroclimatic contrasts might be related to changes in both intensities and locations of different atmospheric circulations, which result from changes of surface temperatures of tropical Indian-Pacific oceans.
Keywords: Tibetan Plateau Lake Qinghai Lake Erhai Lake Chenghai Lake Lugu Indian summer monsoon East Asian summer monsoon
*Corresponding Author, E-Mail: xuhai2003@263.net
Bulletin of Mineralogy, Petrology and Geochemistry Vol. 34, No.2, 2015, page 257-268
