Changes in Late Pleistocene Dust Activity in the Southern Tibetan Plateau in Response to Orbital Precession and Mountain Glaciers

Abstract

The Tibetan Plateau (TP) serves not only as the “water tower” of Asia but also as an important source in the global atmospheric dust cycle. While our knowledge of modern dust activity and its impacts and interactions with climate change in the TP has greatly advanced in the past decades, the emission, transport, and deposition of dust on the geological time scale remains unclear. This study analyzed a 7.6-m thick sedimentary sequence consisting of loess and sand from the Yarlung Tsangpo River (YTR) valley in the southern TP. The sequence chronology was established using nineteen K-feldspar post-infrared infrared stimulated luminescence (pIRIR) ages, which ranged from 47.11 ± 1.95 to 116.65 ± 5.55 ka in a general stratigraphical order. The dust sedimentation rate and sorting coefficient of grain size were used to reflect dust activity and near-surface wind, respectively. The results indicated that dust activity in the southern TP is mainly regulated by the near-surface wind intensity and follows the variation pattern of precession, although the waxing and waning of mountain glaciers also affect the amplitude of dust activity. This pattern is not consistent with the Greenland dust record, which follows the variation pattern of obliquity. Therefore, dust accumulation in the southern TP is concluded to be primarily controlled by the South Asian winter monsoon (SAWM) forced by precession, whereas dust accumulation in Greenland is closely related to the intensity of the high-level westerlies forced by obliquity.