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A record from Wanxiang Cave, China, characterizes Asian Monsoon (AM) history over the past 1810 years. The summer monsoon correlates with solar variability, Northern Hemisphere and Chinese temperature, Alpine glacial retreat, and Chinese cultural changes. It was generally strong during Europe's Medieval Warm Period and weak during Europe's Little Ice Age, as well as during the final decades of the Tang, Yuan, and Ming Dynasties, all times that were characterized by popular unrest. It was strong during the first several decades of the Northern Song Dynasty, a period of increased rice cultivation and dramatic population increase. The sign of the correlation between the AM and temperature switches around 1960, suggesting that anthropogenic forcing superseded natural forcing as the major driver of AM changes in the late 20th century.

Based on 5 high-precision 230Th dates and 103 stable oxygen isotope ratios (δ18O) obtained from the top 16 mm of a stalagmite collected from Wanxiang Cave, Wudu, Gansu, variation of monsoonal precipitation in the modern Asian Monsoon (AM) marginal zone over the past 100 years was reconstructed. Comparison of the speleothem δ18O record with instrumental precipitation data at Wudu in the past 50 years indicates a high parallelism between the two curves, suggesting that the speleothem δ18O is a good proxy for the AM strength and associated precipitation, controlled by “amount effect” of the precipitation. Variation of the monsoonal precipitation during the past 100 years can be divided into three stages, increasing from AD 1875 to 1900, then decreasing from AD 1901 to 1946, and increasing again thereafter. This variation is quite similar to that of the Drought/Flooding index archived from Chinese historical documents. This speleothem-derived AM record shows a close association with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) between AD 1875 and 1977, with higher monsoonal precipitation corresponding to cold PDO phase and vice versa at decadal timescale. The monsoonal precipitation variation is out of phase with the PDO after AD 1977, probably resulting from the decadal climate jump in the north Pacific occurring at around AD 1976/77. These results demonstrate a strong linkage between the AM and associated precipitation and the Pacific Ocean via ocean/atmosphere interaction. This relationship will aid to forecast future hydrological cycle for the AM monsoon region, and to improve forecasting potential of climatic model with observation data from cave.

This paper addresses the distributed finite-time tracking problem for multiple uncertain mechanical systems with dead-zone input and external disturbances. An observer-based adaptive finite-time consensus protocol is designed, which consists of two steps. Firstly, distributed observers are developed such that all the mechanical systems can obtain the leader's state in finite settling time. Then, based on backstepping method and adding a power integrator technique, the finite-time consensus protocol and appropriate adaptive laws are designed to track the estimated leader's state. Rigorous proofs show that the tracking errors between each mechanical system and the leader can converge to a small neighborhood of origin in finite time despite the presence of dead-zone nonlinearity and external disturbances. Finally, simulation example is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The surface energy balance algorithm for land method was used in this study to calculate the evapotranspiration (ET) rate for the middle reaches of the Heihe River Basin, Gansu Province, China, to analyse ET distribution within the oasis and the surrounding desert and, especially, on the edge zone of the oasis. Five profile graphs were created vertical to the river. Because of the inverse humidity phenomenon, the least amount of evapotranspiration occurred on the desert close to the oasis. The average evapotranspiration rate was roughly proportioned from the edge of the oasis to inside and outside its boundary. Two meteorological ground stations located close to the oasis edge showed a notable difference in net radiation flux that led to the difference found in ET. The primary reason for the significant differences observed in net radiation may be largely the result of differences in flux reflectivity and surface temperature. Meteorological data show that water supply also played an important role. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]