** Progress in Earth and Planetary Science is the official journal of the Japan Geoscience Union, published in collaboration with its 51 society members.
** Progress in Earth and Planetary Science is partly financially supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Publication of Scientific Research Results to enhance dissemination of information of scientific research.
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Evolution and variability of the Asian monsoon and its potential linkage with uplift of the Himalaya and Tibetan Plateau
Tada R, Zheng H, Clift P D
East Asian summer monsoon, East Asian winter monsoon, Indian summer monsoon, Himalaya, Tibetan Plateau, Chinese Loess Plateau, Climate model, Tectonic–climate linkage, Westerly jet, Desertification
Evolution of Asian monsoons, desertification, HTP uplift, and their relation with global changes during Cenozoic. Temporal changes of a δ18O of benthic foraminifera (modified from Zachos et al. 2001) and b pCO2 (modified from Zhang et al. 2013) are compared with temporal evolution of c Asian monsoons, d desertification, e HTP uplift, and f associated tectonic events. In c and e, gray bars represent weak phases and black bars represent strong phases. In d, JuB and TaB indicate Jungger Basin and Tarim Basin, respectively.
In the densely populated region of East Asia, it is important to know the mechanism, scale, and frequency of heavy precipitation brought about during the monsoons and typhoons. However, observational data, which cover only several decades, are insufficient to examine the long-term trend of extreme precipitation and its background mechanism. In humid areas, the transport flux of a suspended detrital material through a river system is known to have an empirical power relationship with precipitation. Thus, the sedimentation flux of a fine detrital material could potentially be used as a proxy for reconstructing past heavy precipitation events. To test the idea that the sedimentation flux of detrital materials records past heavy precipitation events (e.g., typhoons), we focused on the detrital flux estimated from the annually laminated sediment of Lake Suigetsu, central Japan, which is capable of accurately correlating the age of detrital flux with the precipitation record. We first established a precise age model (error within ±1 year in average) beginning in 1920 A.D. on the basis of varve counting fine-tuned by correlation between event layers with historical floods. The flux of the detrital material (g/cm2/year) was estimated on the basis of Al2O3 content (wt%), dry bulk density (g/cm3), and sedimentation rate (cm/year) calculated from the age model. The detrital flux of background sedimentation showed a weak positive correlation with annual and monthly (June and September) precipitation excluding heavy precipitation that exceeded 100 mm/day. Furthermore, the thickness of instantaneous event layers, which corresponds to several maxima of detrital flux and is correlated with floods that occurred mainly during typhoons, showed a positive relationship with the total amount of precipitation that caused a flood event. This result suggests that the detrital flux maxima (deposition of event layers) record past extreme precipitation events that were likely associated with typhoons that hit the middle part of Honshu Island. Based on this result, the record of typhoon-caused flood events can go back to older period (e.g., last glacial period) on the basis of the occurrence, and thickness, or mass flux of event layers using long sediment cores from Lake Suigetsu.
