Holocene paleomagnetic secular variation from East China Sea and a PSV stack of East Asia

•This is the first PSV from East China Sea.•Paleomagnetic directions are still preserved after diagenetic alteration.•Holocene PSV stack of East Asia was established.•The PSV stack would be used as a reference curve for relative dating of East Asia.

Paleomagnetic secular variation (PSV) provides information on the mechanisms of the geodynamo and can also be used for stratigraphic correlation on a regional scale. In this study, we constructed PSV curves of relative rapidly deposited Holocene marine sequence from East China Sea. Results show that the dominant magnetic carriers are pseudo-single domain (PSD) to multidomain (MD) magnetites. Paleomagnetic directions are preserved by coarse-grained magnetite, even affected by post-depositional diagenetic alteration. The PSV record of core MD06-3040 exhibits six major inclination peaks and five declination swings during the Holocene. The periodicities for inclination are about 2000 and 550 years, and for declination are about 1400 and 500 years. The PSV of MD06-3040 is comparable to archeomagnetic and historic results for the last 2500 years and to PSV results from lake sediments in southern China and Japan during the Holocene. A PSV stack of East Asia is constructed by sedimentary and archeological PSV results, which can be used as an important reference curve for a large region, and the PSV correlation between sites can be applied for relative dating of East Asia.