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Article Dans Une Revue Nature Geoscience Année : 2024

Proto-monsoon rainfall and greening in Central Asia due to extreme early Eocene warmth

Niels Meijer
Amber Woutersen
  • Fonction : Auteur
Carina Hoorn
Faez Robin-Champigneul
Alexander Rohrmann
  • Fonction : Auteur
Mattia Tagliavento
  • Fonction : Auteur
Julia Brugger
Fanni Kelemen
Andrew Schauer
  • Fonction : Auteur
Micheal Hren
Aijun Sun
  • Fonction : Auteur
Jens Fiebig
Andreas Mulch

Résumé

The dry continental interior of Asia has remained arid throughout most of its geological history, yet the future of this unique ecosystem remains unclear. Here, we use palynological and isotopic records to track vegetation and moisture throughout the warm early Eocene (57 to 44 million years ago) as an analogue for extreme atmospheric CO2 scenarios. We show that rainfall temporarily doubled and replaced the regional steppe by forested ecosystems. By reconstructing the season of pedogenic carbonate growth we constrain the soil hydrologic regime and show that most of this rainfall occurred during the summer season. This humid event is therefore attributed to an inland expansion of monsoonal moisture following the massive greenhouse gas release of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) as identified by a negative carbon isotope excursion. The resulting abrupt greening of the Central Asian steppe-desert would have enabled mammal dispersal and could have played a role in carbon cycle feedbacks by enhancing soil organic carbon burial and silicate weathering. These extreme Eocene proto-monsoons, albeit different from the topography-driven Asian monsoon today, highlight the potential for abrupt shifts in Central Asian rainfall and ecosystems under future global warming.

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Climatologie
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hal-04426859 , version 1 (30-01-2024)

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Niels Meijer, Alexis Licht, Amber Woutersen, Carina Hoorn, Faez Robin-Champigneul, et al.. Proto-monsoon rainfall and greening in Central Asia due to extreme early Eocene warmth. Nature Geoscience, 2024, 17 (2), pp.158-164. ⟨10.1038/s41561-023-01371-4⟩. ⟨hal-04426859⟩
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