EAST-ASIA WINTER MONSOON OSCILLATION AND ITS CORRELATION WITH THE NORTH-ATLANTIC HEINRICH EVENTS DURING THE LAST GLACIATION

On the basis of the correlation between paleoclimatic proxy index of t he Chinese loess deposit and that of the marine sediments (SPECMAP), t he boundary ages of loess sequences were obtained. A new time model, w hich assumes that coarse grain size maxima in the loess-palaeosol succ ession mark the time when deposition flux increased, was used to const ruct chronology of Malan loess deposit on the Chinese loess plateau. T he percentage of > 40 mu m grains was employed as the proxy index of w inter monsoon strength; its variation over the last glacial period was reconstructed preliminarily. The results show that there were several episodes over which the winter monsoon strengthened in the last glaci ation, and each episode spanned several hundred or thousand years, ind icating that East Asia winter monsoon oscillated on millennium time sc ale during the last glacial period. The comparison with the paleoclima tic events of massive icebergs released into the North Atlantic Ocean (Heinrich events) displays a resemblance, and it is confirmed that Chi nese loess and intercalated accretionary palaeosols bear some paleocli mate signals remote from the North Atlantic region.