Journal
SCIENCE
Volume 331, Issue 6022, Pages 1299-1302Publisher
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1126/science.1198322
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Funding
- National Science Foundation [EAR-0822922 (P2C2)]
- Norwegian Research Council through the Decadal to Century-Scale Variability in East Asia Climate (DecCen)
- Arctic Records of Climate Change (ARCTREC)
- Natural Environment Research Council [ceh010010] Funding Source: researchfish
- Directorate For Geosciences
- Division Of Earth Sciences [0822922] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Between 15,000 and 18,000 years ago, large amounts of ice and meltwater entered the North Atlantic during Heinrich stadial 1. This caused substantial regional cooling, but major climatic impacts also occurred in the tropics. Here, we demonstrate that the height of this stadial, about 16,000 to 17,000 years ago ( Heinrich event 1), coincided with one of the most extreme and widespread megadroughts of the past 50,000 years or more in the Afro-Asian monsoon region, with potentially serious consequences for Paleolithic cultures. Late Quaternary tropical drying commonly is attributed to southward drift of the intertropical convergence zone, but the broad geographic range of the Heinrich event 1 megadrought suggests that severe, systemic weakening of Afro-Asian rainfall systems also occurred, probably in response to sea surface cooling.
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