Tracing the provenance of fine-grained dust deposited on the central Chinese Loess Plateau

Eolian dust deposits in north China provide an excellent means of determining past variations in continental paleoclimate and atmospheric circulation. However, debate still exists on which deserts in east Asia are the dominant sources of Chinese loess and whether the dust provenance has shifted significantly at different time scales. Here we present new constraints on the provenance of fine-grained dust deposited on the central Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP) by combining electron spin resonance signal intensity and crystallinity index of fine-grained quartz contained in samples from two loess-paleosol sequences. Our results show that the fine-grained dust deposits on the CLP originate mainly from the Gobi desert in southern Mongolia and the sandy deserts in northern China (primarily the Badain Juran and Tengger deserts), rather than from the Taklimakan desert in western China, at least during the last climatic cycle. The dominant source of fine-grained dust varied significantly, from southern Mongolia during cold periods, to northern China during warm periods. The glacial-interglacial provenance fluctuations are strongly coupled with changes in the intensity of the near-surface northwesterly winter monsoon.