Key Laboratory of Western Chinese Environmental System (Ministry of Education), College of Earth and Environmental Science, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China.
Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Nat Commun. 2022 Jul 8;13(1):3977. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-31577-w.
Periodic wetting is an inherent feature of many monsoon marginal region deserts. Previous studies consistently demonstrate desert wetting during times of Earth's high orbital eccentricity and strong summer monsoon. Here we report the first evidence demonstrating desert wetting during Earth's low orbital eccentricity from the late Miocene strata of the northwestern Tarim Basin of northern China, which is commonly thought to be beyond the range of Asian monsoon precipitation. Using mechanisms for modern Tarim wetting as analogs, we propose that East Asian summer monsoon weakening enhanced westward moisture transport and caused opposite desert wetting pattern to that observed in monsoon marginal region deserts. This inference is supported by our model simulations. This result has far-reaching implications for understanding environmental variations in non-monsoonal deserts in the next few thousands of years under high atmospheric CO content and low eccentricity.
周期性湿润是许多季风边缘区域沙漠的固有特征。先前的研究一致表明，在地球高偏心率和强夏季季风时期，沙漠会变得湿润。在这里，我们首次报告了在中国北方塔里木盆地西北部晚中新世地层中，地球低偏心率时期沙漠湿润的证据，这通常被认为超出了亚洲季风降水的范围。利用现代塔里木湿润的机制作为类比，我们提出东亚夏季风减弱增强了向西的水汽输送，并导致与季风边缘区域沙漠中观察到的相反的沙漠湿润模式。我们的模型模拟支持这一推断。这一结果对于理解在高大气 CO 含量和低偏心率条件下，未来几千年非季风沙漠环境变化具有深远意义。
