Linking Monsoon Activity with River-Derived Sediments Deposition in the Northern South China Sea

Abstract

The history of the East Asian monsoon (EAM) since Last Glacial Maximum is reconstructed based on records in a sediment core retrieved from the northern South China Sea. The provenance of organic carbon and the EAM’s evolution are investigated using combined organic carbon, grain size, and AMS ¹⁴C dating analysis. Responding to the strong winter monsoon, the marine organic matter was dominated in the sediments, and δ ¹³C of organic matter was high during the last glacial period. During the Holocene, the primary productivity decreased and the dilution effect of riverine inorganic clastics strengthened. Accordingly, the total organic carbon contents and δ ¹³C values decreased, and terrestrial organic matter content increased in the core sediments. The 4 μm grain size fraction, as the environmental sensitive grain size component, is determined to reconstruct the paleoclimatic records. During the last glacial period, the contents of 4 μm grain size component were mainly controlled by the sea level changes. Upon the Holocene, the influence of the sea level changes weakened and the roles of current system and provenance strengthened. The correlation between the EAM and solar insolation forcing is also discussed in this paper.

Journal

Journal ID (publisher-id): JOUC

Title: Journal of Ocean University of China

Publisher: Science Press and Springer (China )

ISSN (Electronic): 1672-5182

Publication date (Electronic): 24 August 2019

Publication date (Print): 01 October 2019

Volume: 18

Issue: 5

Pages: 1098-1104

Affiliations

¹Key Laboratory of Submarine Geosciences, State Oceanic Administration, Hangzhou 310012, China

²Second Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources, Hangzhou 310012, China

³Key Laboratory of Physical Oceanography, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266100, China

Author notes

*Corresponding authors: GE Qian and XU Dong

Article

Publisher ID: s11802-019-4155-4

DOI: 10.1007/s11802-019-4155-4

Copyright statement: Copyright © Ocean University of China, Science Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany 2019.

License:

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Product

Self URI (journal-page): https://www.springer.com/journal/11802