Changing environmental conditions and genetic adaptations may explain how penguins radiated and expanded their geographic ranges to encompass diverse environments.
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Edited by Thure E. Cerling, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, and approved April 18, 2013 (received for review August 2, 2012)
Abstract
The East Asian monsoon is one of Earth’s most significant climatic phenomena, and numerous paleoclimate archives have revealed that it exhibits variations on orbital and suborbital time scales. Quantitative constraints on the climate changes associated with these past variations are limited, yet are needed to constrain sensitivity of the region to changes in greenhouse gas levels. Here, we show central China is a region that experienced a much larger temperature change since the Last Glacial Maximum than typically simulated by climate models. We applied clumped isotope thermometry to carbonates from the central Chinese Loess Plateau to reconstruct temperature and water isotope shifts from the Last Glacial Maximum to present. We find a summertime temperature change of 6–7 °C that is reproduced by climate model simulations presented here. Proxy data reveal evidence for a shift to lighter isotopic composition of meteoric waters in glacial times, which is also captured by our model. Analysis of model outputs suggests that glacial cooling over continental China is significantly amplified by the influence of stationary waves, which, in turn, are enhanced by continental ice sheets. These results not only support high regional climate sensitivity in Central China but highlight the fundamental role of planetary-scale atmospheric dynamics in the sensitivity of regional climates to continental glaciation, changing greenhouse gas levels, and insolation.
Footnotes
- ↵1To whom correspondence may be addressed. E-mail: rob.eagle{at}gmail.com or aradhna.tripati{at}gmail.com.
Author contributions: R.A.E., C.R., and A.K.T. designed research; R.A.E., C.R., and A.K.T. performed research; G.L. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; R.A.E., C.R., J.L.M., J.M.E., U.S., and J.D.N. analyzed data; and R.A.E. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1213366110/-/DCSupplemental.
High climate sensitivity over continental China
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