Typhoon rainfall impact on drip water delta O-18 in Xianyun cave, Southeast China

Precisely dated high-resolution speleothems may record past typhoon events, however, the state of the art cave monitoring is a prerequisite to identify suitable stalagmites for the reconstruction of such events. With this motivation, we examined the isotopic composition (delta O-18 and d-excess values) of rainfall, outside river, cave drip water, and an underground river in the Xianyun cave system, located in southeastern China. Monthly to bi-monthly monitoring of environmental and isotopic conditions was conducted for 1 year, from December 2018 to December 2019, including a typhoon event (August 24, 2019 to August 26, 2019), called Bailu. The delta O-18 of rainfall samples over the cave and outside river water ranged from -9.7 parts per thousand to -1.9 parts per thousand and -8.2 parts per thousand to -6.3 parts per thousand, respectively, while the delta O-18 of Typhoon Bailu rainfall and instantaneous outside river water ranged from -19.6 parts per thousand to -6.3 parts per thousand and -10.4 parts per thousand to -7.7 parts per thousand, respectively. Typhoon Bailu-induced rainfall showed distinctly negative delta O-18 values as compared to those of the monthly and bi-monthly rainfall, exhibiting a three-stage inverted U-shaped variation characteristic. Four drip water monitoring sites inside the cave revealed low variations during the studied period with average values of -7.8 parts per thousand, -8.0 parts per thousand, -8.0 parts per thousand, and -8.1 parts per thousand. However, during the typhoon, the drip water delta O-18 values exhibited similar characteristic as outside rainfall but with just 0.2 parts per thousand negative deviation owing to precipitation amount and drip water source reservoir. The integration of rainfall amount with drip water source reservoir determines the degree to which a typhoon isotopic signature gets diluted during epikarst infiltration. This study provides the first instrumental evidence of typhoon signal in karst system in southeastern China. Our results imply that the delta O-18 of drip water in Xianyun cave can instantaneously respond to typhoon rainfall. However, the 0.2 parts per thousand shift in drip water delta O-18 is difficult to be recorded by speleothems. We suggest multi-year monitoring to ascertain fully if the stalagmites could be used as paleotyphoon proxy.

Automated summary

The study monitored the isotopic composition of rainfall in the Xianyun cave system in southeastern China, including a typhoon event. The delta O-18 values of typhoon rainfall differed significantly from typical monthly rainfall, while drip water showed minimal variations during the study period.