Holocene climate changes in the central Asia mountain region inferred from a peat sequence from the Altai Mountains, Xinjiang, northwestern China

The regional climate patterns have been generally dominated by alternations of warm-dry and cold-wet episodes during the Holocene that were quite different from the warm-wet and cool-dry episodes in the Asian summer monsoon region. Regional comparisons indicate that the climate changes in arid central Asia have been mainly influenced by the North Atlantic Ocean sea surface temperatures (SSTs) via the westerlies. However, owing to the mountainous character of the study areas, glacial meltwater, and other local factors, the climate changes in the Altai Mountains region have not always been concordant with variations of North Atlantic Ocean SSTs. We postulate that the history of moisture balance between regional precipitation, glacier and snow meltwater, and evaporation has been modulated by air temperatures that were mainly influenced by changes in the summer insolation of the Northern Hemisphere.