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Late Quaternary lake-level and climate changes in arid central Asia inferred from sediments of Ebinur Lake, Xinjiang, northwestern China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 June 2019

Jianchao Zhou ,
Jinglu Wu ,
Long Ma  and
Mingrui Qiang
Jianchao Zhou
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory of Lake Science and Environment, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, People's Republic of China University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, People's Republic of China
Jinglu Wu*
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory of Lake Science and Environment, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, People's Republic of China Research center for Ecology and Environment of Central Asia, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Urumqi 830011, People's Republic of China
Long Ma
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory of Desert and Oasis Ecology, Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Urumqi 830011, People's Republic of China
Mingrui Qiang
Affiliation:
School of Geography, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510631, People's Republic of China
*
*Corresponding author at: State Key Laboratory of Lake Science and Environment, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, People's Republic of China. E-mail address: w.jinglu@niglas.ac.cn (J. Wu).
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Abstract

Arid central Asia plays an important role in global climate dynamics, but large uncertainties remain in our understanding of the region's hydroclimate variability during the Late Quaternary. Here we present a new, high-resolution record of lacustrine sediment grain-size and element chemistry from Ebinur Lake, which was used to infer lake conditions and related climate changes in the study region between ca. 39.2 and 3.6 ka. End-member modeling analysis of grain-size data and PCA of elemental data show that lake level fluctuated dramatically from 39.2 to 34.0 ka. Subsequently, Ebinur Lake experienced a high stand from 34.0 to 28.0 ka, under humid climate conditions. The subsequent period, from 28.0 to 12.0 ka, was characterized by lake regression under dry climate conditions, whereas afterward (12.0–3.6 ka), considerably higher lake levels and humid conditions again prevailed. Millennial-scale abrupt climate changes, such as Heinrich events (H3 and H1) and the Younger Dryas, which are documented in the North Atlantic region, are also detected in the sediment record from Ebinur Lake. Comparisons with other sediment records from arid central Asia generally support the claim that climate change in this region was influenced mainly by variations in North Atlantic sea surface temperatures, through the westerlies.

Keywords

Lake levelClimate changeArid central AsiaGrain sizeElemental compositionEbinur Lake
Type
Research Article
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 92 , Issue 2 , September 2019 , pp. 416 - 429
Copyright
Copyright © University of Washington. Published by Cambridge University Press, 2019 

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