Abstract:
Paleoclimate records indicate that the strength of the Asian summer monsoon is sensitive to orbital forcing at the obliquity and precession periods (41,000 and 23,000 years, respectively) and the extent of Northern Hemisphere glaciation. Over the past 2.6 million years, the timing (phase) of strong monsoons has changed by ~83° in the precession and ~124° in the obliquity bands relative to the phase of maximum global ice-volume (inferred from the marine d18O record). These results suggest that one or both of these systems is nonstationary relative to orbital forcing.
