A decadal-resolution stalagmite record of strong Asian summer monsoon from northwestern Vietnam over the Dansgaard–Oeschger events 2–4

Abstract

Previous paleoclimatic studies by Asian cave records have shown that variability in the Asian summer monsoons is well correlated with local summer insolation, North Atlantic climate, and the Greenland stadial-interstadial cycles on millennial to orbital time-scales. However, it remains unclear whether a similar agreement exists on short timescales. With 230Th dates in precision as good as ±62 years, we present a decadal-resolved δ18O record covering 30.0–22.7 thousand years ago (ka) from a stalagmite of Son La Province, northwestern Vietnam as a proxy record of the Asian summer monsoon (ASM). On millennial timescales, our data show strong coherence with Chinese and North Indian speleothem δ18O records, suggesting that the ASM has synchronously responded over a broad region to Dansgaard–Oeschger (D-O) events in the North Atlantic. We observe that the onset timing and structure of D-O 4 varied spatially. The event commenced earlier and less abrupt at sites located with a connection to the modern Intertropical convergence Zone (ITCZ) than sites off the influence from ITCZ. It implies that the tropics may play a critical role in the global climate system. In addition, our decadal-resolution record clearly demonstrated a few centennial events with a duration of ~200 years, which probably correlates with the Suess cycle of solar activity.

Keywords

• Speleothem
• Oxygen isotope
• Asian summer monsoon
• Dansgaard–Oeschger events
• Northwestern Vietnam