Centennial-scale climate variabilities during the Holocene on northeastern Tibetan Plateau

The northeastern Tibetan Plateau (TP) plays an important role in understanding the interactions between the Asian Summer Monsoon (ASM) and the westerlies. However, significant contraries on Holocene paleoclimate evolution are still exist. To better understand the climate history on the northeastern TP particularly its variabilities, we here investigated the stable carbon isotopes of Black Carbon (BC) (δ¹³C_BC) in a 474-cm long sediment core retrieved from Lake Gyaring in the source area of the Yellow River. Our results show that the relatively positive δ¹³C_BC values before ~ 5.2 cal. ka BP indicates a warm-dry climate during the early Holocene. While the decreasing trend thereafter reflects that the climate on the northeastern TP had been generally cooler and wet since the middle Holocene. The changes of the Northern Hemisphere solar insolation and the substantial remnant of ice sheets might have primarily controlled the overall climatic variation on the northeastern TP during the Holocene through their influences on the intensity of the westerlies and ASM as well as the Atlantic Ocean sea surface temperatures (SSTs). Superimposed on the long-term paleoclimate evolution pattern, at least six centennial-scale cold-wet events characterized by significant δ¹³C_BC depletions occurred at about 8.4, 5.8, 5.0, 4.3, 2.7 and 0.9 cal kyr BP. Those abrupt climate events well corresponded to the ice-rafted debris records in North Atlantic attesting that the northern Hemisphere high latitude climate have a significant influence on the climate variabilities on the TP.