Holocene summer temperature in arid central Asia linked to millennial-scale North Atlantic climate events and driven by centennial-scale solar activity

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.palaeo.2020.109880Get rights and content

Highlights

  • A high resolution Holocene peat α-cellulose δ13C record from the Altai Mountains.

  • Altai peat reveals millennial and centennial-scale summer temperature variability.

  • There is a climatic link between the North Atlantic and ACA on millennial scale.

  • Century-scale temperature variability in ACA is highly sensitive to solar forcing.

Abstract

The millennial- and centennial-scale variability of Holocene climate in arid central Asia (ACA) is poorly understood, due to the lack of high-resolution records, especially of temperature. We present a high-resolution (~45-yr) peat α-cellulose δ13C record spanning the last ~11,030 years from a well-dated peat core (ATM10-C7) from the Altai Mountains in ACA. It is interpreted as a summer temperature record and exhibits millennial- and centennial-scale variability. The millennial-scale variability corresponds well to North Atlantic ice rafting events, implying a climatic link between the North Atlantic and the ACA via the Westerlies. The centennial-scale cold events were synchronous with stages of low solar activity. Spectral and cross-spectral analyses demonstrate that summer temperature and solar activity have a common cyclicity, and we therefore suggest that solar activity was the fundamental driver of the centennial-scale variability of summer temperature in ACA during the Holocene.

Introduction

Arid central Asia (ACA; Fig. 1) is very sensitive to climatic changes because of its dry climate, dwindling water resources and fragile ecosystems (Narisma et al., 2007; Sorg et al., 2012). In northwestern China, for example, ongoing global climatic warming is expected to have major social and economic effects (Deng and Chen, 2017; Shi et al., 2007). Understanding the variability and forcing mechanisms of climate variability within ACA during the Holocene is critical for understanding its present climatic status and for predicting possible future states.

In recent decades, the historical evolution of Holocene moisture in ACA has been widely studied using various geological archives (Cai et al., 2017; Chen et al., 2008, Chen et al., 2016; Cheng et al., 2012; Herzschuh, 2006; Rao et al., 2019a; Rudaya et al., 2009; Wang and Feng, 2013; Wang et al., 2013). However, there are divergent viewpoints on the status of Holocene moisture conditions, and in addition, relatively little attention has been paid to Holocene temperature variations until very recently. The incomplete understanding of moisture variations in ACA can partly be attributed to the scarcity of long-term and reliable regional temperature proxy records (Rao et al., 2019a). Moreover, most of the previous studies have focused on long-term climatic changes, while it is often difficult to investigate millennial- and centennial-scale climate oscillations because of the lack of well-dated paleoclimatic records with an adequate temporal resolution. However, millennial- and centennial-scale climatic events during the Holocene have been widely detected in high latitudes (Bond et al., 2001; Wanner et al., 2011) and the Asian monsoon region (Gupta et al., 2003; Huang et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2005, Wang et al., 2016; Xu et al., 2015). These climatic oscillations are thought to have had major effects on the development of agriculture and potentially the collapse of ancient civilizations (Cullen et al., 2000; DeMenocal, 2001; Douglas et al., 2016; Giosan et al., 2012; Weiss et al., 1993; Yancheva et al., 2007). Although moisture fluctuations on the centennial scale have been reported in ACA during the last 2000 years or since the mid-Holocene (Liu et al., 2019; Song et al., 2015; Zhao et al., 2009), millennial- and centennial-scale climate oscillations over the entire Holocene in arid northwest China are poorly characterized and understood. Thus more high-resolution records from ACA, especially of temperature, are needed to better understand regional climatic variability during the Holocene.

A previous study has confirmed that peat α-cellulose δ13C record from the central-southern Altai Mountains in ACA (Fig. 1) can serves as a proxy indicator of summer temperature, based on detailed modern-process study results (Rao et al., 2019b). A major advantage of this record is that its chronology is well-constrained by 22 AMS 14C dates of the peat α-cellulose samples. It therefore provides an excellent opportunity to reveal possible millennial- and centennial-scale Holocene temperature variations and to examine the possible forcing mechanisms. In this study, we made a detailed comparison of our α-cellulose δ13C record with the stacked record of the percentages of hematite-stained grains in sediments from the subpolar North Atlantic (Bond et al., 2001). The results show a close teleconnection between Altai summer temperature and North Atlantic climate, not only in terms of the long-term trend but also on millennial timescales. In addition, comparison of the α-cellulose δ13C time series with records of solar activity (including total solar irradiance, residual atmospheric Δ14C concentration, and sunspot numbers) shows that the centennial-scale temperature variability is highly sensitive to solar forcing.

Section snippets

Materials and methods

This study is based on the high resolution (~45 yr on average) α-cellulose δ13C record previously published in Rao et al., 2019b. A 7.35-m-long peat core, ATM10-C7 (48°7′13.5″N, 88°21′26.4″E; 2450 m elevation; Fig. 1) was collected from an alpine peatland in the Altai Mountains in arid northwestern China using a peat corer. The Altai region, located in the core zone of the Eurasian continent, has a typical temperate continental climate. The North Atlantic, which transports large amounts of

The chronology

The chronology of core ATM10-C7 is based on 22 peat α-cellulose AMS 14C dates, giving an average age-control point every 500 yr. A Bayesian age-depth model (Fig. 2) was established using R (v3.2.1; R Core Team, 2015) and Bacon v2.2 software (Blaauw and Christen, 2011). According to the age model, core ATM10-C7 spans the last ~11,030 years and the average temporal resolution is ~45 yr (for further details of the dating methods, see Rao et al., 2019b).

The Altai peat α-cellulose δ13C record

As shown in Fig. 3, the Altai peat δ13C

Climatic significance of peat α-cellulose δ13C

The peat profile consists mainly of sedge, based on the results of the pollen content and plant macrofossils. In order to determine the indicative significance of peat α-cellulose δ13C, a detailed modern-process study was carried out (Rao et al., 2019b). The correlation between climatic factors and α-cellulose δ13C of modern sedge plants was determined monthly for two specific years (2014 and 2017). The relationship between climatic data for 1954 to 2011 and the nearby tree ring α-cellulose δ13

Conclusions

We have used α-cellulose carbon isotopic data (δ13C) from a well-dated peat core from the Altai Mountains in ACA to produce a high-resolution record of summer temperature during the Holocene. The peat α-cellulose δ13C record exhibits a series of millennial- and centennial-scale variations superimposed on the long-term trend. Comparison of the summer temperature record with the percentages of hematite-stained grains in sediment cores from the subpolar North Atlantic reveals that orbital- and

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41772373, 41372181), the Hunan Provincial Natural Science foundation of China (2018JJ1017), the Project of Enhancing School with Innovation of Guangdong Ocean University (GDOU230419097), the program for scientific research start-up funds of Guangdong Ocean University (R19007), Open Fund of the Key Laboratory of Marine Geology and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences (MGE2019KG04), and the Natural Science Foundation

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