Searching the Resource Information Network
Are you sure you want to leave this community? Leaving the community will revoke any permissions you have been granted in this community.
The La Niña and El Niño phases of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) have major impacts on regional rainfall patterns around the globe, with substantial environmental, societal and economic implications. Long-term perspectives on ENSO behaviour, under changing background conditions, are essential to anticipating how ENSO phases may respond under future climate scenarios. Here, we derive a 7700-year, quantitative precipitation record using carbon isotope ratios from a single species of leaf preserved in lake sediments from subtropical eastern Australia. We find a generally wet (more La Niña-like) mid-Holocene that shifted towards drier and more variable climates after 3200 cal. yr BP, primarily driven by increasing frequency and strength of the El Niño phase. Climate model simulations implicate a progressive orbitally-driven weakening of the Pacific Walker Circulation as contributing to this change. At centennial scales, high rainfall characterised the Little Ice Age (~1450-1850 CE) in subtropical eastern Australia, contrasting with oceanic proxies that suggest El Niño-like conditions prevail during this period. Our data provide a new western Pacific perspective on Holocene ENSO variability and highlight the need to address ENSO reconstruction with a geographically diverse network of sites to characterise how both ENSO, and its impacts, vary in a changing climate.
Pubmed ID: 30733569
Publication data is provided by the National Library of Medicine ® and PubMed ®. Data is retrieved from PubMed ® on a weekly schedule. For terms and conditions see the National Library of Medicine Terms and Conditions.
CSIRO, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, is Australia''s national science agency and one of the largest and most diverse research agencies in the world. National Research Flagships: Large-scale, long-term, multidisciplinary science to address Australia''s major national challenges and opportunities. Divisions: CSIRO expertise is organised into 14 research areas: * Animal, Food and Health Sciences * Astronomy and Space Science * Earth Science and Resource Engineering * Ecosystem Sciences * Energy Technology * Food & Nutritional Sciences * ICT Centre * Land and Water * Livestock Industries * Marine and Atmospheric Research * Materials Science & Engineering * Mathematics, Informatics and Statistics * Plant Industry * Process Science and Engineering National Facilities: CSIRO manages national facilities and collections that are opened to researchers around Australia and overseas.
View all literature mentions