Reconstructing Holocene climatic oscillations in the Indian monsoon system using cores from Himalayan (Manasbal, Tso Moiri) and central Indian (Lonar) lakes

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The Indian subcontinent receives precipitation from two regimes: the westerlies and the monsoon. Aside from providing the precipitation, the two wind regimes interact in complex manners to alter the geographical patterns of moisture availability, and extreme events. For this reason no single site in India can be considered to be representative of past climate variability – rather data from a suite of sites from climatically sensitive regions (Himalaya and central India) needs to be combined to obtain a “composite palaeomonsoon curve”, as is planned in this project. We aim to reconstruct changes in the Holocene erosional, sedimentation, palaeoproductivity, and vegetation patterns from palaeolake sediments using a variety of sedimentological, geochemical and palynological tools. This data will be linked to climate variability, moisture sources, and catchment area dynamics. Investigation on modern samples, modern monitoring and pollen-climate transfer functions will help in the quantification of Holocene precipitation changes, and identification of extreme climate events and their impact on the vegetation.In the first years of this project we aim to investigate the Holocene climate variability in three lakes (Lonar, Manasbal and Tso Moriri) in decadal scale with higher resolution in selected time slices. Based on our data, we will extend the record in these lakes (length and resolution) and extend our coverage to the East Indian lakes in the second phase. The climate sensitivity of the East Indian lakes is being investigated in the Z project by raising and investigating short cores.