Showing papers by "Xianfeng Wang published in 2014"
TL;DR: In this paper, a global atmospheric teleconnection links North Atlantic cooling to the weakening of the South Pacific Split Jet, a pronounced zonally asymmetric feature of the wintertime Southern Hemisphere westerlies.
75 citations
TL;DR: In this article, an annually laminated stalagmite from the northern Yucatan Peninsula contains mud layers from 256 cave flooding events over 2240 years, with the greatest frequency during the twentieth century and the least frequent during the seventeenth century.
Abstract: An annually laminated stalagmite from the northern Yucatan Peninsula contains mud layers from 256 cave flooding events over 2240 years. This new conservative proxy for paleotempestology recorded cave flooding events with a recurrence interval of 8.3 years during the twentieth century, with the greatest frequency during the twentieth century and the least frequent during the seventeenth century. Tropical cyclone (TC) events are unlikely to flood the cave during drought when the water table is depressed. Applying TC masking to the Chaac paleorainfall reconstruction suggests that the severity of the Maya “megadroughts” was underestimated. Without a high-resolution radiometric geochronology of individual local TC events, speleothem isotope records cannot resolve whether the Terminal Classic Period in the northern Maya Lowlands was punctuated by several brief drought breaks with normal TCs, or whether the region was very dry and peppered by unusually severe and frequent hurricane seasons.
48 citations
TL;DR: A stalagmite record from south-western China characterizes the millennial-scale changes in Asian Monsoon (AM) intensity from 39.3 to 28.7 ka as discussed by the authors, showing that AM variation exhibits a broad similarity with Greenland ice δ18O records and with Antarctica but in an opposite sense.
Abstract: A speleothem record from south-western China characterizes in detail the millennial-scale changes in Asian Monsoon (AM) intensity from 39.3 to 28.7 ka. The calcite δ18O profile, with an average resolution of ∼8 years, shows several strong monsoon events concurrent with Greenland Interstadials (GIS) 8–4. To gain a systematic perspective of AM millennial-scale variability, the new and previously reported data from the same cave are combined, showing that AM variation exhibits a broad similarity with Greenland ice δ18O records and with Antarctica but in an opposite sense. For the interval that encompasses GIS 5 and GIS 4.1, however, our stalagmite δ18O record depicts a sustained strong monsoon with no distinctive oscillation between these interstadials. Another prominent characteristic in our record is a gradual transition into Chinese Interstadial (CIS) 8, which is well constrained by an annually laminated sequence. We find that an initial rise in monsoon intensity, lasting a few centuries, significantly precedes the abrupt onset of CIS 8 in the AM realm. This suggests that atmospheric moisture and heat transport are probably capable of inducing abrupt climate change when a rapid reorganization of ocean/atmosphere circulations passes a tipping point.
33 citations