Millennial-scale dynamics of the East Asian winter monsoon during the last 200,000 years

Abstract

The primary productivity dynamics of the last 200,000 years in the the Sulu Sea was reconstructed using the abundance of the coccolithophore Florisphaera profunda in the IMAGES MD97-2141 core. We find that primary productivity was enhanced during glacial periods, which we suggest is due to a stronger East Asian winter monsoon. During the last 80 kyr, eight significant increases in primary productivity (PP) in the Sulu Sea are similar to East Asian winter monsoon changes recorded in Chinese loess. The PP maxima are not linked with Heinrich events (HE) in the North Atlantic, although four PP peaks are synchronous with HE. The PP oscillations have frequencies near those of the Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles in Northern Hemisphere ice records and indicate a teleconnection of the East Asian winter monsoon with Greenland climate. In this Sulu Sea record the East Asian winter monsoon oscillates with periodicities of ∼6, 4.2-3.4, 2.3, and 1.5 kyr. In particular, the 1.5 kyr cycle exhibits a strong and pervasive signal from stage 6 to the Holocene without any ice volume modulation. This stationarity suggests that the 1.5 kyr cycle is not driven by some high-latitude forcing.