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It is generally assumed that increased dust accumulation rate (DAR) on the Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP) is associated with intensified inland Asian aridification. However, the timescales and area that any such association operates over is unclear. In this study, we demonstrate a lack of correlation between the southern CLP loess DAR variations and aridification over the past 130 ka, which does not support a direct link between high DAR and intensified inland Asian aridification over millennial to tens of millennial timescales. Instead, we propose that loess DAR variation is more likely determined by wet‐dry cycles and associated loose sediment production and availability via fluvial and glacial processes. Plain Language Summary: Aridification is a global challenge facing humanity. As such, there is a pressing need to understand changes in aridification over a range of scales, as well as their causes. Arid inland Asia is the largest middle‐latitude arid region, and mineral dust emitted from here is found downwind in the Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP) loess, North Pacific Ocean sediments, and even Greenland ice. As a result, North Pacific and CLP sediments are frequently used to infer inland Asian aridification history. Underpinning this is the assumption that faster dust accumulation corresponds to increased inland Asian aridification. By contrast, here we demonstrate that fast dust accumulation during cycles within the Ice Age on the southeastern CLP correspond instead to periods of increased East Asian river erosion associated with intensified dry‐wet climatic contrasts. Thus, dust accumulation is decoupled from inland Asian aridification variations. This challenges one of the most basic foundations in inland Asian aridification research. This study has broad implications for understanding the responses and feedbacks of atmospheric dust in climate systems, dust‐climate modeling assumptions, understanding of inland Asian aridity history and its causes, and interpretations of far field dust accumulation records in, for example, North Pacific sediments and Greenland ice‐cores. Key Points: Sedimentary evidence is utilized to systematically test the role of inland Asian aridification in Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP) dust accumulationInland Asian aridification is not the dominant control on CLP dust deposition at millennial and tens of millennial timescalesThis underscores the important role of fluvial sediments in supplying sediments to the CLP and local impacts on dust deposition [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The high-resolution Shagou loess section near the northwest limit of the East Asian Summer monsoon, northwest China, was analyzed. The timescale of this section was set up based on a grain size age model and age controls. The record of the Shagou section shows that the millennial-scale oscillations are superimposed on an orbital-scale trend which can be correlated with the variations found in Greenland and the Sulu Sea. Differences in the corresponding Dansgaard–Oeschger cycles between the records in Greenland and the Chinese loess sections, including the orbital-scale trend, the timing and the amplitude, suggest that the climatic signals in Chinese loess might not be singularly regulated by the North Atlantic. The differences in trend and amplitude can be reasonably explained when compared with the Sulu Sea record. This suggests that the western tropical Pacific also exerted an important influence on climatic signals found in the Chinese loess record, possibly countering the impact of high latitude factors during the Last Glacial. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]