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Evolution of vegetation and climate variability on the Tibetan Plateau over the past 1.74 million years

Zhao, Y; Tzedakis, PC; Li, Q; Qin, F; Cui, Q; Liang, C; Birks, HJB; ... Guo, Z; + view all (2020) Evolution of vegetation and climate variability on the Tibetan Plateau over the past 1.74 million years. Science Advances , 6 (19) , Article eaay6193. 10.1126/sciadv.aay6193. Green open access

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Abstract

The Tibetan Plateau exerts a major influence on Asian climate, but its long-term environmental history remains largely unknown. We present a detailed record of vegetation and climate changes over the past 1.74 million years in a lake sediment core from the Zoige Basin, eastern Tibetan Plateau. Results show three intervals with different orbital- and millennial-scale features superimposed on a stepwise long-term cooling trend. The interval of 1.74–1.54 million years ago is characterized by an insolation-dominated mode with strong ~20,000-year cyclicity and quasi-absent millennial-scale signal. The interval of 1.54–0.62 million years ago represents a transitional insolation-ice mode marked by ~20,000- and ~40,000-year cycles, with superimposed millennial-scale oscillations. The past 620,000 years are characterized by an ice-driven mode with 100,000-year cyclicity and less frequent millennial-scale variability. A pronounced transition occurred 620,000 years ago, as glacial cycles intensified. These new findings reveal how the interaction of low-latitude insolation and high-latitude ice-volume forcing shaped the evolution of the Tibetan Plateau climate.

Type: Article
Title: Evolution of vegetation and climate variability on the Tibetan Plateau over the past 1.74 million years
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aay6193
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aay6193
Language: English
Additional information: This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited.
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Geography
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10097220
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