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Tibetan uplift intensified the 400 k.y. signal in paleoclimate records at 4 Ma

Junsheng Nie^1,, John W. King² and Xiaomin Fang³

¹ Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island, South Ferry Road, Narragansett, Rhode Island 02882, USA Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Science, P.O. Box 2871, Beijing 100085, China Key Laboratory of Western China's Environment System, Ministry of Education, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, Gansu 730000, China
² Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island, South Ferry Road, Narragansett, Rhode Island 02882, USA
³ Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Science, P.O. Box 2871, Beijing 100085, China Key Laboratory of Western China's Environment System, Ministry of Education, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, Gansu 730000, China

Correspondence: E-mail: junsheng{at}gso.uri.edu; Tel: 401-874-6182.

Knowledge of when and how a specific climatic threshold is crossed is one key to an understanding of the evolution of Earth's climate system. We have observed a simultaneous intensification of the ~400 k.y. cycle, in both proxy records for global ice volume and for East Asian monsoon precipitation on the Chinese Loess Plateau at ca. 4 Ma, indicating that important climatic thresholds were crossed. The 400 k.y. climatic cycles can be substantially intensified by clipped responses to insolation. We argue that Tibetan uplift accelerated at ca. 4 Ma and triggered such responses. The weaker orbital-band climatic signal during the interval 4–3.6 Ma indicates that the thresholds were only crossed slightly.

Key Words: Tibetan Plateau • Loess Plateau • magnetic susceptibility • eccentricity • benthic oxygen isotope