The age distribution of detrital zircon has been used to trace sediment sources. Existing datasets show great similarity of zircon ages between the loess on the Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP) and the sediments from the North Tibetan Plateau (NTP), implying that eolian dust is delivered from the NTP to the CLP by westerly winds or via the Yellow River. However, NTP dust can also be transported by northwesterly winds from the Alxa arid lands (AALs), where materials are received from both the NTP and the Gobi Altay Mountains (GAMs). Here we report U–Pb zircon ages for AALs sands and NTP and CLP loess. The results show that the zircons in the AALs are mixed from NTP and GAMs zircons. NTP loess is mainly derived from local sources. Mixing of materials from the NTP and GAMs defines the zircon ages of the loess on the CLP better than the pure NTP source. No temporal and spatial heterogeneities of zircon ages have been observed for the loess on the CLP, which suggests that the well-mixed materials in the AALs likely have an eolian source.

A 30,000 yr dinocyst and pollen record from the eastern equatorial Atlantic (off Cameroon) has been investigated in order to identify land–ocean linkages during the last deglacial transition. A strong correlation between the abundance of Brigantedinium spp. and the Ca/Fe ratio during the last glacial period suggests enhanced marine productivity in association with cool seawater temperatures and nutrient input linked to coastal upwelling and/or a proximal river mouth. Dry conditions are recorded on the adjacent continent with a significant representation of open vegetation indicators and the Afromontane taxon Podocarpus. After 17 calka BP these indicators register a sharp decline as a result of a climatic transition from the dry/cooler conditions of the last glacial period to the wetter/warmer conditions of the deglaciation. Simultaneously, dinocysts show a significant shift from dominant heterotrophs to an increasing abundance of autotrophs, reflecting warmer conditions. Significant changes are observed during the Younger Dryas, with a return to drier conditions and higher salinities. The start of the Holocene is marked by very low-salinity conditions, reflecting optimal monsoonal conditions over west equatorial Africa. The end of the African Humid Period is observed between 6 and 5 calka BP, followed by significant fluctuations in both terrestrial and oceanic proxies.

Fire and vegetation records at the City of Rocks National Reserve (CIRO), south-central Idaho, display the interaction of changing climate, fire and vegetation along the migrating front of single-leaf pinyon (Pinus monophylla) and Utah juniper (Juniperus osteosperma). Radiocarbon dating of alluvial charcoal reconstructed local fire occurrence and geomorphic response, and fossil woodrat (Neotoma) middens revealed pinyon and juniper arrivals. Fire peaks occurred ~ 10,700–9500, 7200–6700, 2400–2000, 850–700, and 550–400 cal yr BP, whereas ~ 9500–7200, 6700–4700 and ~ 1500–1000 cal yr BP are fire-free. Wetter climates and denser vegetation fueled episodic fires and debris flows during the early and late Holocene, whereas drier climates and reduced vegetation caused frequent sheetflooding during the mid-Holocene. Increased fires during the wetter and more variable late Holocene suggest variable climate and adequate fuels augment fires at CIRO. Utah juniper and single-leaf pinyon colonized CIRO by 3800 and 2800 cal yr BP, respectively, though pinyon did not expand broadly until ~ 700 cal yr BP. Increased fire-related deposition coincided with regional droughts and pinyon infilling ~ 850–700 and 550–400 cal yr BP. Early and late Holocene vegetation change probably played a major role in accelerated fire activity, which may be sustained into the future due to pinyon–juniper densification and cheatgrass invasion.

Manganese (Mn) in lake sediments reacts strongly to changes of redox conditions. This study analyzed Mn concentrations in oxides, carbonates, and bulk phases of the calcareous lacustrine sediments of a 938.5-m-long core (SG-1) taken from the western Qaidam Basin, well dated from 2.77 Ma to 0.1 Ma. Comparisons of extractions from diluted hydrochloric acid, acetic acid and citrate"bicarbonate"dithionite demonstrate that variations of Mn concentrations from acetic acid leaching (MnHOAc) are mostly responsible for Mn (II) fluctuations in the carbonate phase. Taking into account the relevant processes during weathering, transportation, deposition and post-deposition of Mn-bearing rocks, we conclude that Mn input from catchment weathering and paleolake redox condition provide the primary controls on variations in the Mn records of carbonate and oxide phases. We propose MnHOAc as a new sensitive indicator of paleolake redox evolution and catchment-scale climate change. The MnHOAc variations show a long-term upward decreasing trend, indicating a long-term decrease of Mn input from catchment weathering associated with increasing oxygen content in the paleolake bottom water. The great similarities of the MnHOAc record with other regional and global records suggest that paleolake redox changes and climatic drying in the Qaidam Basin may be largely related to global cooling.

Tsunamis and storms instigate sedimentological and geomorphological changes to the coastal system, both long-term and ephemeral. To accurately predict future coastal hazards, one must identify the records that are generated by the processes associated with these hazards and recognize what will be preserved. Using eyewitness accounts, photographs, and sedimentology, this study documents pre- and post-tsunami conditions and constrains the timing and process of depositional events during and following the 11 March 2011 Tohoku tsunami in the coastal system at El Garrapatero, Galapagos Islands. While the tsunami acted as both an erosional and depositional agent, the thick, fan-like sand sheet in El Garrapatero was primarily emplaced by overwash deposition during high tide from swell waves occurring between 19–25 March and 17–22 April 2011. The swell waves were only able to access the terrestrial coastal system via a channel carved by the 2011 Tohoku tsunami through the barrier sand dune. This combined deposit could result in an overestimation of the hazard if interpreted to be the result of only one event (either tsunami or wind-generated waves). An analogous sand layer, younger than 1390–1530 calyr BP, may record a similar, prior event.

Three robust tree-ring density chronologies were developed for the western Tianshan Mountains of northwestern China. The chronologies were significantly correlated and form a regional chronology (GLD). The GLD had significant and positive correlations with temperature of warm seasons. Based on this relationship, the mean minimum temperatures of May to August were reconstructed using the GLD chronology for the period AD 1657 to 2008. The temperature reconstruction exhibited temperature patterns on interannual to centennial timescales, and showed that the end of the 20th century is the warmest period in the past 352 years. The reconstructed temperature variation has a teleconnection with large-scale atmospheric–oceanic variability and captures long- and broad-scale regional climatic variations.

Areal mapping of the middle Wisconsin varved clay site along Sixmile Creek near Ithaca, New York, has revealed a much more widespread and varied array of sediments than previously thought. Lacustrine clays, some varved, are interbedded with sands and gravels interpreted as sub-aqueous fan deposits, and both are overlain by a deformation till. Nine radiocarbon dates indicate a 34–37 14C ka BP age for the lacustrine sediment, with the deformation till less than a few thousand years younger. Beneath this sequence is a deposit dated at ± 42 14C ka BP. Both strata represent a tundra climate with a mean July temperature of about 10°C. The Sixmile Creek deformation till must correlate with the 35 14C ka BP till along the Genesee River, 125 km to the NW, and defines a Cherrytree stade glacial advance into the Appalachian Plateau, much further south than what has generally been accepted. Such an advance would require drainage from a proglacial lake in the western Ontario basin to flow westward instead of northeastward. The Sixmile strata suggest a colder than accepted middle Wisconsin stage. Recent data indicate that this stage is one of progressive cooling, with large climatic fluctuations.

Fire is one of the most important natural disturbances in the coniferous forests of the US Rocky Mountains. The Rocky Mountains are separated by a climatic boundary between 40° and 45° N, which we refer to as the central Rocky Mountains (CRM). To determine whether the fire regime from the CRM was more similar to the northern Rocky Mountains (NRM) or southern Rocky Mountains (SRM) during the Holocene, a 12,539-yr-old sediment core from Long Lake, Wyoming, located in the CRM was analyzed for charcoal and pollen. These data were then compared to charcoal records from the CRM, NRM and SRM. During the Younger Dryas chronozone, the fire regime was characterized as frequent at Long Lake. The early and middle Holocene fire regime was characterized as infrequent. A brief interval from 4000 to 3000 cal yr BP, termed the Populus period, had a frequent fire regime and remained frequent through the late Holocene at Long Lake. In comparison to sites from the NRM and SRM, the fire regime at Long Lake was most similar to the SRM during the past 12,539 cal yr BP. These results suggest the disturbance regime in the CRM has a greater affinity with those of the SRM.

Changes in sea-cliff morphologies along the 30-km-long Sharon Escarpment segment of Israel's weakly cemented Mediterranean eolianite cliff line were analyzed to gain quantitative insights into erosion characteristics associated with a high-energy winter storm (10–20 year return interval). Ground-based repeat LiDAR measurements at five sites along the cliff line captured perturbations of cliff stability by basal wave scouring during the storm, subsequent post-storm gravity-driven slope failures in the cliff face above, and return of the system to transient stability within several months. Post-storm erosion, which amounted to 70% of the total volume of cliff erosion documented, resulted in dramatic local effects of up to 8 m of cliff-top retreat. And yet, at the larger scale of the 30-km cliff line examined, erosion during the storm and the year that followed affected less than 4% of the cliff length and does not appear to be above the average cliff-length annual erosion implied by previously published decadal-scale retreat rates along this sea cliff. Our results do not support a direct association between strong storm events and elevated erosion and retreat at the cliff-line scale.

We present a reconstruction of June–July minimum temperatures since AD 1245 for the Mackenzie Delta region based on a 29-site network of white spruce (Picea glauca) ring-width series. Most but not all trees experienced a divergent temperature–growth response, similar to the divergence that has affected other white spruce trees across Yukon and Alaska. However, divergence in the study region began as early as AD 1900 and we have documented our methods to avoid including divergent signals in the reconstruction. Calibration/verification testing based on local temperature data, and multi-century coherence with nearby and large-scale temperature proxy records, confirm that our reconstruction is robust. The reconstruction shows cool conditions in the late 13th, early 18th and early 19th centuries, corresponding with solar minima and increased volcanism. These cool periods are interrupted by warm periods consistent with early to mid-20th century warmth. The late 20th century is the warmest interval, and the last decade is estimated to be 1.4°C warmer than any decade before the mid-20th century. The reconstructed climate history corroborates other proxy-based inferences and supports the notion that high-latitude regions such as the Mackenzie Delta have experienced rapid warming in recent decades that is exceptional in the last eight centuries.

Complex flow-like landslides (CFLLs) are important geomorphic agents of Late Quaternary mountain evolution in the Flysch Belt of the Outer Western Carpathians. The CFLLs are characterised by the upper section of deep-seated, retrogressive landslide of structurally unfavourably oriented rocks and lower sections composed of earthflows originated due to liquefaction of material accumulated from the upper slopes. Radiocarbon dating of organic matter incorporated into landslide debris or related deposits suggests that most of the CFLLs collapsed repeatedly throughout the Holocene with typical recurrence intervals of approximately 1–2 ka. Catastrophic landslides that occurred during extreme hydrometeorological events in recent decades displayed evidence of Holocene activity. Most of the CFLLs dammed and steepened adjacent valleys. Our chronological dataset is biased by erosion of older landforms, but most of the dated reactivations correlate to regional increases in humidity identified by previous paleoenvironmetal studies.

We generated a 5.5-yr snapshot of biweekly-to-monthly resolved time series of carbon and oxygen isotope composition (δ13C and δ18O) and Sr/Ca and Mg/Ca from annually banded aragonite skeleton of a ~ 197 ka pristine Porites coral collected at Niue Island (19°00′S, 169°50′W) in the southwestern subtropical Pacific Ocean. This report is the first of a high-resolution coral-based paleoclimate archive during the Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 7 interglacial. Statistical results suggest that annual averages of sea-surface temperature (SST) and salinity (SSS) at ~ 197 ka were not significantly different from and ~ 1.2 higher than at present, respectively. Monthly mean variations showed increased SSS at ~ 197 ka that was higher (1.4–1.9 relative to today) in the austral summer than in the austral winter. Monthly SST and SSS anomalies at ~ 197 ka indicated smaller amplitudes by ~ 0.3°C (11%) and ~ 0.3 (24%) relative to the present, possibly suggesting less influence of interannual climate variability around Niue. Our results, taken together with other climate proxy records, imply seasonal and interannual modulation of thermal and hydrological conditions, different from today, in the southwestern subtropical Pacific Ocean associated with the Western Pacific Warm Pool and the South Pacific Convergence Zone variability during the MIS 7 interglacial.

Development of an accurate chronology for glacial deposits in the Sierra Nevada has long been problematic given the lack of suitable organic material for radiocarbon dating. Lichenometry initially appeared promising as ages showed an increase from cirque headwalls to down-canyon moraines. However, while Recess Peak lichen age estimates range from 2 to 3 ka, recent work shows these deposits to be at least 10 ka older. Here, we present evidence for a late Holocene reset of Recess Peak lichen ages by significant post-depositional climate change. Following late-Pleistocene deposition of Recess Peak moraines, warming through the mid-Holocene allowed forests to advance into shallow basins eliminating local inverted tree lines. This produced a partial canopy where shading killed the original post-Pleistocene crustose lichen colonies. Late-Holocene cooling resulted in forest retreat from these basins as alpine tree line fell. Lichens then recolonized the re-exposed Recess Peak deposits. We conclude that while Recess Peak lichen ages are accurate to within the dating uncertainty of the technique, existing lichen ages actually date the timing of post-mid-Holocene cooling and recolonization, and not the original emplacement of these deposits. Thus, applications of Lichenometry should consider post-depositional environmental change when interpreting the meaning of these dates.

Knowledge of peatland initiation, accumulation, and decline or cessation is critical in understanding peatland development and the related carbon source/sink effect. In this study, we investigated the development of three peat profiles along the eastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau (ETP) and compared the results with those of our previous work along this transect. Our work showed that the initiation over the northern ETP is later and the slowdown/cessation earlier than in the middle to southern ETP. The timing of optimum peatland formation over the northern ETP lags the Holocene climatic optimum. These spatio-temporal differences are likely to be related to the intensity of Asian summer monsoon. Our work suggests that some peatlands along the ETP transect have returned or are now returning their previously captured carbon to the atmosphere and thus act as carbon sources. Some peatlands still have net accumulation at present, but the rates have been reduced concomitant with the decreasing summer monsoon intensity. We speculate that more of the previously stored carbon in the ETPpeatlands will be re-emitted to the atmosphere if the aridity continues, as might occur under a continuous global-warming scenario.

Expansion or shrinkage of closed lakes is a natural response to fluctuations in precipitation and evaporation, linked closely to changes in strength or position of atmospheric circulation. In Tibet, there are many such lakes with paleo-shorelines that can be used for reconstructions of climate history. Despite the fact that many paleo-shorelines are well preserved in Tibet, dating them has been seriously hindered by various difficulties. Here we present the first optical dating chronology for a series of paleo-shorelines in Zhari Namco, the third-largest inland lake in central Tibet. Our results indicate that the lake level has dropped 128 m over the past 8.2 ka. Younger shorelines are found at lower altitudes, indicating that the shorelines follow a geomorphic-chronological order and a broadly continuous trend of stepwise shrinkage. The surface area of Zhari Namco has shrunk in size from 4605 km2 at 8.2 ka ago to 996 km2 at present; 300 km2 of water has been lost from this lake. Such a loss in water implies a significant reduction in precipitation over the past 8.2 ka, a likely result of a weakening Asian monsoon. Following the decreasing precipitation since the early Holocene, this area has become increasingly arid.

This study establishes a detailed lake-level history for the Lake Superior basin by mapping strandlines from 10-m and 3-m digital elevation models. There are 24 levels above the mid-Holocene Nipissing level, and elevations increase along a direction of 23.1° due to post-glacial rebound. The highest level, the Epi-Duluth, is steeper than subsequent levels and may pre-date the Lake View ice advance into the western Lake Superior basin at the end of the Younger Dryas stade. The most prominent level is the Duluth, ca. 10,800 cal yr BP. Ice retreat exposed successively lower outlets, routing overflow to the Lake Michigan and Huron basins. By 10,600 cal yr BP, lake levels in the western Superior basin had dropped almost 200 m. This transformative period is complicated by multiple basin-wide events: the influx of glacial Lake Agassiz overflow, the creation of three sub-aqueous moraines, and a red to gray color transition in basin sediments. A later drawdown event has been hypothesized to have initiated the 9300 cal yr BP cooling event, but this flood was much smaller than estimated previously. If freshwater triggered the 9300 cal yr BP event, the source of the water must have been Lake Agassiz, not Lake Superior.

The regional climate correlation within the Northern Hemisphere in the cold/dry mid-Younger Dryas event (YD) remains elusive. A key to unraveling this issue is sufficient knowledge of the detailed climate variability at the low latitudes. Here we present a high-resolution (3-yr) δ18O record of an annually laminated stalagmite from central China that reveals a detailed Asian monsoon (AM) history from 13.36 to 10.99 ka. The YD in this record is expressed as three phases, characterized by gradual onsets but rapid ends. During the mid-YD, the AM variability exhibited an increasing trend superimposed by three centennial oscillations, well-correlated to changes in Greenland temperatures. These warming/wetting fluctuations show a periodicity of ~ 200 yr, generally in agreement with centennial changes in cosmogenic nuclides indicated by the 10Be flux from the Greenland ice. This relationship implies that centennial-scale climate changes during the mid-YD are probably caused by solar output and rapidly transported over broad regions through atmosphere reorganization.

Arid Central Asia (ACA) lies on a major climatic boundary between the mid-latitude westerlies and the northwestern limit of the Asian summer monsoon, yet only a few high-quality reconstructions exist for its climate history. Here we calibrate a new organic geochemical proxy for lake temperature, and present a 45-yr-resolution temperature record from Hurleg Lake at the eastern margin of the ACA in the northern Tibetan Plateau. Combination with other proxy data from the same samples reveals a distinct warm–dry climate association throughout the record, which contrasts with the warm–wet association found in the Asian monsoon region. This indicates that the climatic boundary between the westerly and the monsoon regimes has remained roughly in the same place throughout the Holocene, at least near our study site. Six millennial-scale cold events are found within the past 9000 yr, which approximately coincide with previously documented events of northern high-latitude cooling and tropical drought. This suggests a connection between the North Atlantic and tropical monsoon climate systems, via the westerly circulation. Finally, we also observe an increase in regional climate variability after the mid-Holocene, which we relate to changes in vegetation (forest) cover in the monsoon region through a land-surface albedo feedback.