Clay mineralogical and geochemical proxies of the East Asian summer monsoon evolution in the South China Sea during Late Quaternary.

ABSTRACT: The East Asian summer monsoon controls the climatic regime of an extended region through temperature and precipitation changes. As the East Asian summer monsoon is primarily driven by the northern hemisphere summer insolation, such meteorological variables are expected to significantly change on the orbital timescale, influencing the composition of terrestrial sediments in terms of both mineralogy and geochemistry. Here we present clay mineralogy and major element composition of Core MD12-3432 retrieved from the northern South China Sea, and we investigate their relationship with the East Asian summer monsoon evolution over the last 400 ka. The variability of smectite/(illite + chlorite) ratio presents a predominant precession periodicity, synchronous with the northern hemisphere summer in

SUBMITTER: Chen Q 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5296726 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature