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Understanding the origin and evolutionary history of drought events is of great significance, providing critical insight into future hydrological conditions under the changing climate. Due to the scarcity of drought proxies from northern China, the occurrence and underlying mechanisms of the drought events remains enigmatic on longer timescales. Here we utilize microbial lipid proxies to reconstruct significant drought events over the last four ice age terminations in the southernmost section (Weinan section) of the Chinese Loess Plateau. The abundance of archaeal isoprenoid GDGTs (glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers) relative to bacterial branched GDGTs, measured by R i/b and BIT indices, is diagnostic of enhanced drought conditions. The R i/b (and BIT) indices are stable and low (high) throughout most of the loess section spanning the last 350 thousand years, but they do exhibit sharp transient peaks (valleys) during the intervals associated with the four ice age terminations, and especially Terminations II and IV. These enhanced drought events are, non-intuitively, associated with a significant decrease in the relative abundance of C 4 plants, inferred by a decrease in the carbon isotope composition of bulk organic matter. Although the microbial records show some consistency with the Weinan grain size profiles, indicative of Eastern Asian winter monsoon variability, they also show some apparent difference. In fact, some features of the microbial records exhibit strong similarities with marine sediment planktonic foraminiferal δ 13 C records from the western Pacific warm pool, which reflect ENSO-like changes during glacial terminations. Therefore, enhanced droughts immediately before the interglacial warming in northern China could be explained, at least in part, by teleconnections in tropical ocean–atmosphere circulation via shifts in the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) and associated Jet Stream over the Asian continent. According to our microbial biomarker data, these enhanced megadroughts are apparently different, both in terms of severity and causal mechanism, from the more commonly discussed dry conditions observed during glacial periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The peat sequence at Hani in northeastern China accumulated over the past 16calkyr in a percolation mire in which rain water and ground water seeped through the peat system. The molecular compositions of n-alkanes, n-alkanols, and n-alkanoic acids extracted from the Hani peat sequence reveal different responses to the progressive evolution of climate and changes in the nature of the peat-forming vegetation. Long chain length components that originate from the waxy coatings of subaerial vascular plants dominate the n-alkane distributions throughout the Hani peat sequence. The paleoclimate integrity of these biomarker molecules appears to be well preserved. Most of the n-alkanol distributions are similarly dominated by long chain components that indicate their origins from subaerial plants. In contrast, n-alkanoic acid distributions are dominated by secondary components that record the importance of post-depositional microbial activity in this peat sequence, which evidently can be extensive in a percolation mire. Elevated n-alkane P aq values and C23/C29 ratios, which are both molecular proxies for water-loving plants, record an especially moist local climate in the Bølling-Allerød (14.5 to 12.9ka), Younger Dryas (12.9 to 11.5ka), and Pre-Boreal (11.5 to 10.5ka) portions of the Hani peat sequence. Depressed P aq values and C23/C29 ratios and larger n-alkane average chain length values indicate that the Holocene Climatic Optimum (10.5 to 6ka) was a period of warmer climate with lower effective precipitation, which contrasts with evidence of wetter climates in most of East Asia. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]