A climate threshold at the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau

Proxy records of summer monsoon moisture at Lake Qinghai on the northeastern Tibetan Plateau reveal a late Quaternary climate history that is subtly different from that of speleothems from southern and eastern China. Total organic carbon and authigenic carbonate in two independently analyzed and dated cores indicate (1) relative stability and aridity during the glacial interval, (2) small variations during the BOlling-AllerOd and the Younger Dryas intervals, (3) comparatively abrupt change at the late Pleistocene/Holocene transition, and (4) relatively high variability during a wet early Holocene. Taken together, the data suggest that a climate threshold exists for penetration of Asian monsoon rainfall onto the Tibetan Plateau, a threshold that was crossed at the beginning of the Holocene. Conceptually, the threshold simply may be related to the topographic barrier that the eastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau presents to the landward penetration of the monsoon, or it may be related to nonlinearities in the climate system itself, such as sudden shifts in the configuration of the Westerly jet stream. Different mechanisms for producing a threshold are not mutually exclusive and may have combined to affect the dynamics of the Asian monsoon. In any case, the threshold is related to the presence of the Tibetan Plateau, which has a profound influence on the Asia monsoon system.