Letter abstract
Nature Geoscience 2, 636 - 639 (2009)
Published online: 2 August 2009 | doi:10.1038/ngeo605
Subject Category: Palaeoclimate and palaeoceanography
Increasing Australian–Indonesian monsoon rainfall linked to early Holocene sea-level rise
M. L. Griffiths1, R. N. Drysdale1, M. K. Gagan2, J.-x. Zhao3, L. K. Ayliffe2, J. C. Hellstrom4, W. S. Hantoro5, S. Frisia1, Y.-x. Feng3, I. Cartwright6, E. St. Pierre3, M. J. Fischer7 & B. W. Suwargadi5
The Australian–Indonesian summer monsoon affects rainfall variability and hence terrestrial productivity in the densely populated tropical Indo–Pacific region. It has been proposed that the main control of summer monsoon precipitation on millennial timescales is local insolation1, 2, 3, but unravelling the mechanisms that have influenced monsoon variability and teleconnections has proven difficult, owing to the lack of high-resolution records of past monsoon behaviour. Here we present a precisely dated reconstruction of monsoon rainfall over the past 12,000 years, based on oxygen isotope measurements from two stalagmites collected in southeast Indonesia. We show that the summer monsoon precipitation increased during the Younger Dryas cooling event, when Atlantic meridional overturning circulation was relatively weak4. Monsoon precipitation intensified even more rapidly from 11,000 to 7,000 years ago, when the Indonesian continental shelf was flooded by global sea-level rise5, 6, 7. We suggest that the intensification during the Younger Dryas cooling was caused by enhanced winter monsoon outflow from Asia and a related southward migration of the intertropical convergence zone8. However, the early Holocene intensification of monsoon precipitation was driven by sea-level rise, which increased the supply of moisture to the Indonesian archipelago.
- Environmental and Climate Change Group, The University of Newcastle, Callaghan, New South Wales 2308, Australia
- Research School of Earth Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 0200, Australia
- Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia
- School of Earth Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 2010, Australia
- Research and Development Center for Geotechnology, Indonesian Institute of Sciences, Bandung, 40135, Indonesia
- School of Geosciences, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria 3800, Australia
- Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, PMB1, Menai, New South Wales 2234, Australia
Correspondence to: M. L. Griffiths1 e-mail: Michael.Griffiths@newcastle.edu.au
Correspondence to: M. K. Gagan2 e-mail: Michael.Gagan@anu.edu.au
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