ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2021
Long-term decrease in Asian monsoon rainfall and abrupt climate change events over the past 6,700 years.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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16 citing papers in PubMed, 214 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Recent centennial drought on the Tibetan Plateau is outstanding within the past 3500 years.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Persistent humid climate favored the Qin and Western Han Dynasties in China around 2,200 y ago.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Radiocarbon chronology and settlement patterns in the Bronze Age of the Qaidam Basin, Northwestern China.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Sahara's surface transformation forced an abrupt hydroclimate decline and Neolithic culture transition in northern China.Innovation (Cambridge (Mass.)) · 2024Article
- Mid-to-late Holocene climate variability in coastal East Asia and its impact on ancient Korean societies.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- A 2.5° × 2.5° gridded drought/flood grades dataset for eastern China during the last millennium.Scientific data · 2023Article
- Appeal: the protection of ancient tree species around the world, taking qilian juniper (Heliyon · 2022Review
- The East Asian summer monsoon, the Indian summer monsoon, and the midlatitude westerlies at 4.2 ka BP.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Reply to Weiss: Tree-ring stable oxygen isotopes suggest an increase in Asian monsoon rainfall at 4.2 ka BP.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Modern aridity in the Altai-Sayan mountain range derived from multiple millennial proxies.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Assessing the influence of local environment, regional climate and tree species on radial growth in the Hexi area of arid northwest China.Frontiers in plant science · 2022Article
- Origin of Intra-annual Density Fluctuations in a Semi-arid Area of Northwestern China.Frontiers in plant science · 2021Article
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20 authors at 14 institutions in 9 countries.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Asian summer monsoon (ASM) variability and its long-term ecological and societal impacts extending back to Neolithic times are poorly understood due to a lack of high-resolution climate proxy data. Here, we present a precisely dated and well-calibrated tree-ring stable isotope chronology from the Tibetan Plateau with 1- to 5-y resolution that reflects high- to low-frequency ASM variability from 4680 BCE to 2011 CE. Superimposed on a persistent drying trend since the mid-Holocene, a rapid decrease in moisture availability between ∼2000 and ∼1500 BCE caused a dry hydroclimatic regime from ∼1675 to ∼1185 BCE, with mean precipitation estimated at 42 ± 4% and 5 ± 2% lower than during the mid-Holocene and the instrumental period, respectively. This second-millennium-BCE megadrought marks the mid-to late Holocene transition, during which regional forests declined and enhanced aeolian activity affected northern Chinese ecosystems. We argue that this abrupt aridification starting ∼2000 BCE contributed to the shift of Neolithic cultures in northern China and likely triggered human migration and societal transformation.
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