What drives monsoon climate and droughts over East Asia and the Western Pacific Ocean?

东亚季风（EAM）是全球气候系统的重要组成部分，对数十亿人至关重要。是什么决定了这个系统的强度？需要对过去季风系统变率的新记录来对未来气候变化进行预测。至关重要的是，现有的地质数据提供了关于洪水和干旱潜在驱动机制的相互矛盾的证据，这些证据仍在争论中。来自中国洞穴的地球化学记录显示，气候周期约为2万年，表明EAM主要响应太阳辐射的长期变化，但其他记录表明温室气体和高纬度冰盖强迫更为重要。一个首要的问题是缺乏涵盖主要气候状态之间转变的高质量记录。该项目将研究东亚气候条件变化敏感地区的海洋沉积物岩心，包括日本海、东中国海和北太平洋。您将建立和利用来自亚洲和东亚的风沙变化的长期、准确、高分辨率的记录。这些记录将涵盖关键的全球气候状态/转变，包括中更新世转变，晚上新世北半球冰川作用的增强，以及比现在更温暖的时期，如中上新世和中中新世。

The East Asian monsoon (EAM) is a major component of the global climate system and vital to billions of people. What determines the strength of this system? New records of past variability of the monsoonal system are needed to contextualize predictions of future climate change. Critically, existing geological data provide conflicting evidence on the underlying driving mechanisms of floods and droughts, which are still debated. Geochemical records from caves in China reveal climate cycles paced at ~20 thousand-year intervals, suggesting EAM primarily responds to long-term changes in solar radiation, but other records suggest that greenhouse gas- and high-latitude ice sheet forcing are more important. An over-arching problem is a paucity of high-quality records that cover transitions between major climate states. This project will study marine sediment cores from regions sensitive to changes of climate conditions in East Asia, including the Japan Sea, the East China Sea, and the North Pacific Ocean. You will build and exploit long, well-dated, and high-resolution records of wind-blown dust from Asia and EAM variabilities. These records will cover key global climate states/transitions including the mid-Pleistocene transition, the late-Pliocene intensification of Northern Hemisphere glaciation, and warmer-than-present periods such as the mid-Pliocene and mid-Miocene.