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The sensitivity of the Australian Monsoon to changing climate boundary conditions remains controversial due to limited understanding of forcing processes and past variability. Here, we reconstruct austral summer monsoonal discharge and wind-driven winter productivity across the Middle Pleistocene Transition (MPT) in a sediment sequence drilled off NW Australia. We show that monsoonal precipitation and runoff primarily responded to precessional insolation forcing until ~0.95 Ma, but exhibited heightened sensitivity to ice volume and pCO2 related feedbacks following intensification of glacial-interglacial cycles. Our records further suggest that summer monsoon variability at the precessional band was closely tied to the thermal evolution of the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool and strength of the Walker circulation over the past ~1.6 Myr. By contrast, productivity proxy records consistently tracked glacial-interglacial variability, reflecting changing rhythms in polar ice fluctuations and Hadley circulation strength. We conclude that the Australian Monsoon underwent a major re-organization across the MPT and that extratropical feedbacks were instrumental in driving short- and long-term variability.

Across the Miocene-Pliocene boundary (MPB; 5.3 million years ago, Ma), late Miocene cooling gave way to the early-to-middle Pliocene Warm Period. This transition, across which atmospheric CO2 concentrations increased to levels similar to present, holds potential for deciphering regional climate responses in Asia-currently home to more than half of the world's population- to global climate change. Here we find that CO2-induced MPB warming both increased summer monsoon moisture transport over East Asia, and enhanced aridification over large parts of Central Asia by increasing evaporation, based on integration of our ~1-2-thousand-year (kyr) resolution summer monsoon records from the Chinese Loess Plateau aeolian red clay with existing terrestrial records, land-sea correlations, and climate model simulations. Our results offer palaeoclimate-based support for 'wet-gets-wetter and dry-gets-drier' projections of future regional hydroclimate responses to sustained anthropogenic forcing. Moreover, our high-resolution monsoon records reveal a dynamic response to eccentricity modulation of solar insolation, with predominant 405-kyr and ~100-kyr periodicities between 8.1 and 3.4 Ma.

Much of our understanding of Earth's past climate comes from the measurement of oxygen and carbon isotope variations in deep-sea benthic foraminifera. Yet, long intervals in existing records lack the temporal resolution and age control needed to thoroughly categorize climate states of the Cenozoic era and to study their dynamics. Here, we present a new, highly resolved, astronomically dated, continuous composite of benthic foraminifer isotope records developed in our laboratories. Four climate states-Hothouse, Warmhouse, Coolhouse, Icehouse-are identified on the basis of their distinctive response to astronomical forcing depending on greenhouse gas concentrations and polar ice sheet volume. Statistical analysis of the nonlinear behavior encoded in our record reveals the key role that polar ice volume plays in the predictability of Cenozoic climate dynamics.

The Indonesian Throughflow (ITF) thermocline, as exclusive water source for the "warm water route" of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), provides waters that exit the Indian Ocean and join the AMOC upper limb via the Agulhas Leakage (AL). Hence, investigating long‐term variations in the ITF thermocline and its implications on the AL is important for understanding dynamics of the AMOC. Here, the thermohaline history of the ITF thermocline was reconstructed for the last ∼410 kyr based on δ18O and Mg/Ca of planktonic foraminifera from International Ocean Discovery Program Site U1483. By integrating the new and published records, we found that precession drives variation of the ITF thermocline through modulating the intensity of the Australian‐Indonesian winter monsoon, El Niño‐Southern Oscillation‐like states and formation of the North Pacific Tropical Water, in turn exerting a transoceanic influence on the amount of the AL and seawater temperature and salinity of the South Atlantic thermocline. Plain Language Summary: It is widely acknowledged that the Indonesian Throughflow (ITF), a key component of the global thermohaline circulation, plays an important role in the global climate and ocean circulation. However, in contrast to concentrating on the factors that shaped the ITF in the geological history, few studies considered the ITF as a factor to influence climate and ocean circulation, especially on long timescales. In this study, we utilized shell δ18O and Mg/Ca of a planktonic foraminiferal thermocline‐dwelling species from the Timor Sea, the main outflow passage of the ITF, to reconstruct the temperature and salinity changes of the ITF thermocline during the past ∼410 kyr. By integrating the new and published paleo‐oceanographic and ‐climatological records, we found that the ∼20‐kyr wobbles of the Earth's axis (precession) induced variations in the flow strength and seawater temperature and salinity of the ITF thermocline, and in turn regulated the amount of the Agulhas Leakage and seawater temperature and salinity of the South Atlantic thermocline. Our results underscore the essential role of the ITF in the connectivity among the oceans. Key Points: Precession drove variations in the ITF thermocline by modulating the intensity of the Australian‐Indonesian winter monsoon, ENSO‐like states and formation of the North Pacific Tropical WaterVariations in the ITF thermocline regulated the amount of AL and seawater temperature and salinity of South Atlantic thermocline [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]