Clim. Past, 14, 1805–1817, 2018 https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-14-1805-2018 © Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Hydroclimatic variations in southeastern China during the 4.2 ka event reflected by stalagmite records Haiwei Zhang1,2, Hai Cheng1,3, Yanjun Cai2,1,6, Christoph Spötl4, Gayatri Kathayat1, Ashish Sinha5, R. Lawrence Edwards3, and Liangcheng Tan2,1,6 1Institute of Global Environmental Change, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710054, China 2Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Xi’an 710061, China 3Department of Earth Sciences, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455, USA 4Institute of Geology, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck 6020, Austria 5Department of Earth Science, California State University Dominguez Hills, Carson, California 90747, USA 6Open Studio for Oceanic-Continental Climate and Environment Changes, Pilot National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (Qingdao), Qingdao 266061, China Correspondence: Haiwei Zhang (
[email protected]) Received: 24 August 2018 – Discussion started: 30 August 2018 Accepted: 7 November 2018 – Published: 27 November 2018 Abstract. Although the collapses of several Neolithic cul- 1 Introduction tures in China are considered to have been associated with abrupt climate change during the 4.2 ka BP event (4.2– The 4.2 ka BP event was a pronounced climate event in the 3.9 ka BP), the timing and nature of this event and the spa- Holocene that has been widely studied in the past 20 years. tial distribution of precipitation between northern and south- It was identified as an abrupt (mega)drought and/or cooling ern China are still controversial.