Clim. Past, 9, 2777–2788, 2013 Open Access www.clim-past.net/9/2777/2013/ Climate doi:10.5194/cp-9-2777-2013 © Author(s) 2013. CC Attribution 3.0 License. of the Past The East Asian winter monsoon variability in response to precession during the past 150 000 yr M. Yamamoto1,2, H. Sai2,3, M.-T. Chen4, and M. Zhao5 1Faculty of Environmental Earth Science, Hokkaido University, Kita-10, Nishi-5, Kita-ku, Sapporo 060-0810, Japan 2Graduate School of Environmental Science, Hokkaido University, Kita-10, Nishi-5, Kita-ku, Sapporo 060-0810, Japan 3Present address: Hitachi Advanced Systems Corporation. Yokohama 244-0817, Japan 4Institute of Applied Geosciences, National Taiwan Ocean University, Keelung 20224, Taiwan 5Key Laboratory of Marine Chemistry Theory and Technology of the Ministry of Education, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266003, China Correspondence to: M. Yamamoto (
[email protected]) Received: 5 July 2013 – Published in Clim. Past Discuss.: 26 July 2013 Revised: 5 November 2013 – Accepted: 7 November 2013 – Published: 13 December 2013 Abstract. The response of the East Asian winter monsoon 1 Introduction variability to orbital forcing is still unclear, and hypothe- ses are controversial. We present a 150 000 yr record of sea surface temperature difference (1SST) between the South The Asian monsoon is the largest monsoon system on Earth China Sea and other Western Pacific Warm Pool regions as (e.g. Wang et al., 2003). It consists of the East Asian and a proxy for the intensity of the Asian winter monsoon, be- Indian monsoons and is dynamically linked with the Aus- cause the winter cooling of the South China Sea is caused tralian and African monsoons.