There has been frequent dust activity in the northern regions of China in recent years. Research on the evolution of East Asian dust production and transport in the past could provide an important reference for the driving mechanisms of present-day dust activity. 

Previous dust records in East Asia since the peak of the last Ice Age (26.5-19 thousand years ago (ka)) have mainly come from the Chinese Loess Plateau and the arid zones of Central Asia. However, records from lake sediments in northeast China, which is located in the downwind direction of the East Asian winter winds, remain limited. This lack of knowledge hinders the understanding of dust dynamics in northeast China and East Asia more broadly. 

Researchers from the Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NIGLAS), Shandong Normal University, the University of Arizona (U.S.A.) and Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, investigated the history of the East Asian Winter Monsoon over the past 25 ky using the chemistry of a well-dated 12.55m-long sediment of a crater lake (Lake Tuofengling) in northeast China. 

The study was published in Geophysical Research Letters on June 25, 2023. 

They found that the lithogenic sediments of lake Tuofengling are a mixture of local volcanic debris from the lake basin and windblown dust from the Gobi Desert of the Mongolian Plateau. Additionally, the authors suggest that the East Asian Winter Monsoon is the main driving force for the transport of dust from the Mongolian Plateau to Lake Tuofengling over this interval. Based on their new data and previously published work, they propose that changes in dust activity, and in turn the characteristics of the East Asian Winter Monsoon, have likely been controlled by a combination of global ice volume and the strength of Atlantic Ocean circulation since the last Ice Age. 

“Our new record of Mongolian dust input to Lake Tuofengling, along with a knowledge of regional and global climate, allows us to reconstruct the history and driving mechanisms of northeast Asian dust activity over the past 25 ky”, said Zhang Wenfang, first author of the study, “Our study also helps improve our understanding of the driving factors of dust activity in East Asia, and will contribute to our ability to predict dust activity in the future.”