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Understanding the Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM) behaviour during the late Pleistocene has been largely based on the wind-driven upwelling records from the Arabian Sea. However, it remains unclear the extent to which these records can also be used to infer a concomitant signal of monsoon rainfall, or how the two ISM components, rainfall and wind, are linked on millennial timescales. In order to isolate a primary signal of ISM rainfall, we exploit two deep sea sediment cores from the northern Bay of Bengal (Site U1446) and Andaman Sea (Site U1448), both situated proximal to the South Asian continent, and thus ideally situated for capturing ISM rainfall and fluvial runoff. By comparing our multi-proxy ISM rainfall and runoff records with published ISM wind-driven records from the Arabian Sea, we observe pronounced decoupling of the rainfall and wind components of the ISM across Marine Isotope Stage 5/6 (∼140–70 thousand years ago). We reveal that the relative dominance of barometric dynamics (wind) and the thermodynamic (rainfall) components of the monsoon shifts with changes in background climate state. This finding constitutes an important consideration for the interpretation of past monsoon reconstructions. By comparing our new ISM rainfall records with high latitude climate records, we show that moisture export from low-latitudes, via the monsoon, could have preconditioned the high latitudes for ice sheet growth during glacial inceptions.

The geological history of the South Asian monsoon (SAM) before the Pleistocene is not well-constrained, primarily due to a lack of available continuous sediment archives. Previous studies have noted an intensification of SAM precipitation and atmospheric circulation during the middle Miocene (∼14 Ma), but no records are available to test how the monsoon changed prior to this. In order to improve our understanding of monsoonal evolution, geochemical and sedimentological data were generated for the Oligocene-early Miocene (30–20 Ma) from Indian National Gas Hydrate Expedition 01 Site NGHP-01-01A in the eastern Arabian Sea, at 2,674 m water depth. We find the initial glaciation phase (23.7–23.0 Ma) of the Oligocene-Miocene transition (OMT) to be associated with an increase in water column ventilation and water mass mixing, suggesting an increase in winter monsoon type atmospheric circulation, possibly driven by a relative southward shift of the intertropical convergence zone. During the latter part of the OMT, or “deglaciation” phase (23.0–22.7 Ma), a long-term decrease in Mn (suggestive of deoxygenation), increase in Ti/Ca and dissolution of the biogenic carbonate fraction suggest an intensification of a proto-summer SAM system, characterized by the formation of an oxygen minimum zone in the eastern Arabian Sea and a relative increase of terrigenous material delivered by runoff to the site. With no evidence at this site for an active SAM prior to the OMT we suggest that changes in orbital parameters, as well as possibly changing Tethyan/Himalayan tectonics, caused this step change in the proto-monsoon system at this intermediate-depth site.

© The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Clemens, S. C., Yamamoto, M., Thirumalai, K., Giosan, L., Richey, J. N., Nilsson-Kerr, K., Rosenthal, Y., Anand, P., & McGrath, S. M. Remote and local drivers of Pleistocene South Asian summer monsoon precipitation: a test for future predictions. Science Advances, 7(23), (2021): eabg3848, https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abg3848., South Asian precipitation amount and extreme variability are predicted to increase due to thermodynamic effects of increased 21st-century greenhouse gases, accompanied by an increased supply of moisture from the southern hemisphere Indian Ocean. We reconstructed South Asian summer monsoon precipitation and runoff into the Bay of Bengal to assess the extent to which these factors also operated in the Pleistocene, a time of large-scale natural changes in carbon dioxide and ice volume. South Asian precipitation and runoff are strongly coherent with, and lag, atmospheric carbon dioxide changes at Earth’s orbital eccentricity, obliquity, and precession bands and are closely tied to cross-equatorial wind strength at the precession band. We find that the projected monsoon response to ongoing, rapid high-latitude ice melt and rising carbon dioxide levels is fully consistent with dynamics of the past 0.9 million years., S.C.C. and S.M.M. were supported by U.S. NSF OCE1634774. M.Y. was funded by JSPS grants JPMXS05R2900001 and 19H05595 and JAMSTEC Exp. 353 postcruise study. K.N.-K. and P.A. were supported by UK-IODP, Open University, and NERC (NE/L002493/1), K.T. was supported by the Technology and Research Initiative Fund, Arizona Board of Regents.

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2020. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems 21(2), (2020): e2019GC008414, doi:10.1029/2019GC008414., X‐ray fluorescence (XRF) core scanning of marine and lake sediments has been extensively used to study changes in past environmental and climatic processes over a range of timescales. The interpretation of XRF‐derived element ratios in paleoclimatic and paleoceanographic studies primarily considers differences in the relative abundances of particular elements. Here we present new XRF core scanning data from two long sediment cores in the Andaman Sea in the northern Indian Ocean and show that sea level related processes influence terrigenous inputs based proxies such as Ti/Ca, Fe/Ca, and elemental concentrations of the transition metals (e.g., Mn). Zr/Rb ratios are mainly a function of changes in median grain size of lithogenic particles and often covary with changes in Ca concentrations that reflect changes in biogenic calcium carbonate production. This suggests that a common process (i.e., sea level) influences both records. The interpretation of lighter element data (e.g., Si and Al) based on low XRF counts is complicated as variations in mean grain size and water content result in systematic artifacts and signal intensities not related to the Al or Si content of the sediments. This highlights the need for calibration of XRF core scanning data based on discrete sample analyses and careful examination of sediment properties such as porosity/water content for reliably disentangling environmental signals from other physical properties. In the case of the Andaman Sea, reliable extraction of a monsoon signal requires accounting for the sea level influence on the XRF data., The staff at the Bremen Core Repository is thanked for their help with core handling and Sam Müller at the University of Kiel provided technical assistance with the XRF scanner. We thank two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments that improved the manuscript significantly. This work was partially funded through DFG Grant HA 5751/3. P. A. and K. N.‐K. acknowledge support from UK‐IODP and Natural and Environment Research Council, UK. The authors express their thanks to all those who contributed to the success of the National Gas Hydrate Program Expedition 01 (NGHP01) and Expedition 353. The data set supporting the conclusions of this article is available in the PANGEA repository (doi: https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.910533)., 2020-07-10

The Indian Summer Monsoon, a subsystem of the Asian Monsoon, is one of Earth’s most dynamic expressions of oceanic atmospheric-terrestrial processes affecting some of Earth’s most densely populated regions. Therefore, it is imperative to have a comprehensive understanding of the Indian Summer Monsoon in order to understand how its behaviour may be manifested by anthropogenic induced climate changes. Reconstructing how the monsoon behaved in the past presents an opportunity to disentangle its sensitivities to a range of forcing parameters (e.g. ice volume) during periods of different climatic states. However, understanding of how the Indian Summer Monsoon behaved in the past has been limited both spatially and temporally, further constrained by discrepancies among climate proxy records. This thesis fills both a temporal and spatial gap in our knowledge of the past behaviour of the Indian Summer Monsoon. High-resolution (millennial scale) records of Indian Summer Monsoon induced river runoff and surface freshening from the core convective region of the Indian Summer Monsoon, the northern Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea, have been generated from 140 to 70 thousand years ago. These records provide an insight into how the Indian Summer Monsoon responded to the penultimate deglaciation (Termination II), the subsequent warmth of the Last Interglacial Period and ensuing oscillations between warm interstadial and cold stadial periods of Marine Isotope Stage 5. These records are compared with both high-latitude and low-latitude climate records in order to understand how the monsoon responded to changes in Earth’s internal climate system and the influence of external forcing.

South Asian precipitation amount and extreme variability are predicted to increase due to thermodynamic effects of increased 21st-century greenhouse gases, accompanied by an increased supply of moisture from the southern hemisphere Indian Ocean. We reconstructed South Asian summer-monsoon precipitation and runoff into the Bay of Bengal to assess the extent to which these factors also operated in the Pleistocene, a time of large-scale natural changes in carbon dioxide and ice volume. South Asian precipitation and runoff are strongly coherent with, and lag, atmospheric CO2 changes at Earth-orbital eccentricity, obliquity, and precession bands and are closely tied to cross-equatorial wind strength at the precession band. We find that the projected monsoon response to ongoing, rapid high-latitude ice melt and rising CO2 levels is fully consistent with dynamics of the past 0.9 million years.

Most of Earth’s rain falls in the tropics, often in highly seasonal monsoon rains, which are thought to be coupled to the inter-hemispheric migrations of the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone in response to the seasonal cycle of insolation. Yet characterization of tropical rainfall behaviour in the geologic past is poor. Here we combine new and existing hydroclimate records from six large-scale tropical regions with fully independent model-based rainfall reconstructions across the last interval of sustained warmth and ensuing climate cooling between 130 to 70 thousand years ago (Marine Isotope Stage 5). Our data-model approach reveals large-scale heterogeneous rainfall patterns in response to changes in climate. We note pervasive dipole-like tropical precipitation patterns, as well as different loci of pre- cipitation throughout Marine Isotope Stage 5 than recorded in the Holocene. These rainfall patterns cannot be solely attributed to meridional shifts in the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone.

Planktonic foraminifera are widely used in biostratigraphic, palaeoceanographic and evolutionary studies, but the strength of many study conclusions could be weakened if taxonomic identifications are not reproducible by different workers. In this study, to assess the relative importance of a range of possible reasons for among-worker disagreement in identification, 100 specimens of 26 species of macroperforate planktonic foraminifera were selected from a core-top site in the subtropical Pacific Ocean. Twenty-three scientists at different career stages – including some with only a few days experience of planktonic foraminifera – were asked to identify each specimen to species level, and to indicate their confidence in each identification. The participants were provided with a species list and had access to additional reference materials. We use generalised linear mixed-effects models to test the relevance of three sets of factors in identification accuracy: participant-level characteristics (including experience), species-level characteristics (including a participant’s knowledge of the species) and specimen-level characteristics (size, confidence in identification). The 19 less experienced scientists achieve a median accuracy of 57 %, which rises to 75 % for specimens they are confident in. For the 4 most experienced participants, overall accuracy is 79 %, rising to 93 % when they are confident. To obtain maximum comparability and ease of analysis, everyone used a standard microscope with only 35× magnification, and each specimen was studied in isolation. Consequently, these data provide a lower limit for an estimate of consistency. Importantly, participants could largely predict whether their identifications were correct or incorrect: their own assessments of specimen-level confidence and of their previous knowledge of species concepts were the strongest predictors of accuracy.

Understanding the Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM) behaviour during the late Pleistocene has been largely based on the wind-driven upwelling records from the Arabian Sea. However, it remains unclear the extent to which these records can also be used to infer a concomitant signal of monsoon rainfall, or how the two ISM components, rainfall and wind, are linked on millennial timescales. In order to isolate a primary signal of ISM rainfall, we exploit two deep sea sediment cores from the northern Bay of Bengal (Site U1446) and Andaman Sea (Site U1448), both situated proximal to the South Asian continent, and thus ideally situated for capturing ISM rainfall and fluvial runoff. By comparing our multi-proxy ISMra infall and runoff records with published ISM wind-driven records from the Arabian Sea, we observe pronounced decoupling of the rainfall and wind components of the ISM across Marine Isotope Stage 5/6 (~140e70 thousand years ago). We reveal that the relative dominance of barometric dynamics (wind) and the thermodynamic (rainfall) components of the monsoon shifts with changes in background climate state. This finding constitutes an important consideration for the interpretation of past monsoon reconstructions. By comparing our new ISM rainfall records with high latitude climate records, we show that moisture export from low-latitudes, via the monsoon, could have preconditioned the high latitudes for ice sheet growth during glacial inceptions.

The South Asian or Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM) is an iconic reflection of land-ocean-atmosphere inter- actions on Earth, affecting over a billion people. Future predictions of northern hemisphere monsoon rainfall are fraught with large uncertainties in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. To better understand monsoon rainfall pattern/behaviours in future, we need to investigate its response to cli- matic drivers, including past warm intervals. We present multi-proxy geochemical and vegetation records of monsoon variability from the Bay of Bengal using sediment sequences recovered during the Integrated Ocean Discovery Programme (IODP) expedition 353. We utilise these multi-proxy records to assess re- sponses of ISM dynamics to past warming by comparing Holocene and last interglacial warm intervals at sub-millennial timescale. We integrate proxies’ records and intermediate complexity climate model outputs to present evidence for heterogenous rainfall pattern across global tropical landmasses when comparing the Holocene and last interglacial warm intervals. We also find regional differences in monsoon rainfall pattern along with changing loci of the precipitation when comparing these warm intervals. Further, we will present results of seasonal rainfall variability extremes, inferred from continental and marine proxy data, covering cool and warm climate states of the late Pleistocene.

Planktonic foraminifera are widely used in biostratigraphic, palaeoceanographic and evolutionary studies, but the strength of many study conclusions could be weakened if taxonomic identifications are not reproducible by different workers. In this study, to assess the relative importance of a range of possible reasons for among-worker disagreement in identification, 100 specimens of 26 species of macroperforate planktonic foraminifera were selected from a core-top site in the subtropical Pacific Ocean. Twenty-three scientists at different career stages – including some with only a few days experience of planktonic foraminifera – were asked to identify each specimen to species level, and to indicate their confidence in each identification. The participants were provided with a species list and had access to additional reference materials. We use generalised linear mixed-effects models to test the relevance of three sets of factors in identification accuracy: participant-level characteristics (including experience), species-level characteristics (including a participant’s knowledge of the species) and specimen-level characteristics (size, confidence in identification). The 19 less experienced scientists achieve a median accuracy of 57 %, which rises to 75 % for specimens they are confident in. For the 4 most experienced participants, overall accuracy is 79 %, rising to 93 % when they are confident. To obtain maximum comparability and ease of analysis, everyone used a standard microscope with only 35× magnification, and each specimen was studied in isolation. Consequently, these data provide a lower limit for an estimate of consistency. Importantly, participants could largely predict whether their identifications were correct or incorrect: their own assessments of specimen-level confidence and of their previous knowledge of species concepts were the strongest predictors of accuracy.

Most of Earth’s rain falls in the tropics, often in highly seasonal monsoon rains, which are thought to be coupled to the inter-hemispheric migrations of the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone in response to the seasonal cycle of insolation. Yet characterization of tropical rainfall behaviour in the geologic past is poor. Here we combine new and existing hydroclimate records from six large-scale tropical regions with fully independent model-based rainfall reconstructions across the last interval of sustained warmth and ensuing climate cooling between 130 to 70 thousand years ago (Marine Isotope Stage 5). Our data-model approach reveals large-scale heterogeneous rainfall patterns in response to changes in climate. We note pervasive dipole-like tropical precipitation patterns, as well as different loci of pre- cipitation throughout Marine Isotope Stage 5 than recorded in the Holocene. These rainfall patterns cannot be solely attributed to meridional shifts in the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone.

South Asian precipitation amount and extreme variability are predicted to increase due to thermodynamic effects of increased 21st-century greenhouse gases, accompanied by an increased supply of moisture from the southern hemisphere Indian Ocean. We reconstructed South Asian summer-monsoon precipitation and runoff into the Bay of Bengal to assess the extent to which these factors also operated in the Pleistocene, a time of large-scale natural changes in carbon dioxide and ice volume. South Asian precipitation and runoff are strongly coherent with, and lag, atmospheric CO2 changes at Earth-orbital eccentricity, obliquity, and precession bands and are closely tied to cross-equatorial wind strength at the precession band. We find that the projected monsoon response to ongoing, rapid high-latitude ice melt and rising CO2 levels is fully consistent with dynamics of the past 0.9 million years.

The Indian Summer Monsoon, a subsystem of the Asian Monsoon, is one of Earth’s most dynamic expressions of oceanic atmospheric-terrestrial processes affecting some of Earth’s most densely populated regions. Therefore, it is imperative to have a comprehensive understanding of the Indian Summer Monsoon in order to understand how its behaviour may be manifested by anthropogenic induced climate changes. Reconstructing how the monsoon behaved in the past presents an opportunity to disentangle its sensitivities to a range of forcing parameters (e.g. ice volume) during periods of different climatic states. However, understanding of how the Indian Summer Monsoon behaved in the past has been limited both spatially and temporally, further constrained by discrepancies among climate proxy records. This thesis fills both a temporal and spatial gap in our knowledge of the past behaviour of the Indian Summer Monsoon. High-resolution (millennial scale) records of Indian Summer Monsoon induced river runoff and surface freshening from the core convective region of the Indian Summer Monsoon, the northern Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea, have been generated from 140 to 70 thousand years ago. These records provide an insight into how the Indian Summer Monsoon responded to the penultimate deglaciation (Termination II), the subsequent warmth of the Last Interglacial Period and ensuing oscillations between warm interstadial and cold stadial periods of Marine Isotope Stage 5. These records are compared with both high-latitude and low-latitude climate records in order to understand how the monsoon responded to changes in Earth’s internal climate system and the influence of external forcing.