The climatic pattern of East Asia shifted in response to cratonic thinning in the Early Cretaceous

Authors

Wenbo Wang, School of the Earth Sciences and Resources
Xu Chu, University of Toronto
Jian Zhang, Peking University
Ying Cui, Montclair State UniversityFollow
Xuegen Chen, School of the Earth Sciences and Resources
Yue Wang, The Australian National University
Shangguo Su, School of the Earth Sciences and Resources

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-1-2024

Journal / Book Title

Communications Earth and Environment

Abstract

In response to westward subduction of the Paleo-Pacific, the North China Craton experienced the uplift of an eastern coastal plateau followed by subsidence in the Early Cretaceous, which potentially drove a shift in climatic patterns. Here we use the oxygen isotope ratios of garnets from magmatic-hydrothermal ore systems to infer the origins and signatures of mineralization fluids during this tectonic transition. The garnet oxygen isotope values range from approximately –11.4 to +13.5‰, with extremely depleted oxygen isotope ratios exclusively found in the northern margin, indicating extensive involvement of meteoric and lacustrine fluid in the back-arc hinterland. This geological record aligns with climate modeling exhibiting that the coastal plateau amplified northeastward transport of moisture from tropical Tethyan Ocean. The long-distance transport strongly depleted ¹⁸O and ²H (D). As the cratonic lithosphere thinned and the plateau subsided, the Pacific influences began to dominate the climatic pattern of East Asia.

Comments

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material.

DOI

10.1038/s43247-024-01841-6

Journal ISSN / Book ISBN

85209768472 (Scopus)

MSU Digital Commons Citation

Wang, Wenbo; Chu, Xu; Zhang, Jian; Cui, Ying; Chen, Xuegen; Wang, Yue; and Su, Shangguo, "The climatic pattern of East Asia shifted in response to cratonic thinning in the Early Cretaceous" (2024). Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works. 739.
https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/earth-environ-studies-facpubs/739

Published Citation

Wang, W., Chu, X., Zhang, J., Cui, Y., Chen, X., Wang, Y., & Su, S. (2024). The climatic pattern of East Asia shifted in response to cratonic thinning in the Early Cretaceous. Communications Earth & Environment, 5(1), 728.