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Modulation of inter-hemispheric temperature gradients on the Holocene Asian-Australian summer monsoon
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  • Published: 26 December 2025

Modulation of inter-hemispheric temperature gradients on the Holocene Asian-Australian summer monsoon

  • Ge Shi1,2,
  • Hong Yan  ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1230-096X1,
  • Wenchao Zhang3,
  • Zhonghui Liu  ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2168-83054,
  • Nanyu Zhao1,
  • John Dodson  ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0124-59101,5,
  • Hendrik Heijnis6 &
  • …
  • Mark Burrows7 

Nature Communications , Article number:  (2025) Cite this article

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Subjects

  • Climate change
  • Palaeoclimate

Abstract

The Asian-Australian monsoon system (A-AuMS) is the most typical cross-equatorial monsoon system and thus inter-hemispheric comparison is essential to explore its dynamics. Although the evolution of Holocene Asian summer monsoon has been extensively studied, changes in Australian summer monsoon (AuSM) is less investigated due to the lack of identified high-resolution paleoclimate records. Here we obtain a 13.5 kyr AuSM record from lacustrine sediments in northeastern Australia. It suggests that the weakening of the AuSM during the early to middle Holocene was regulated by Northern Hemisphere high-latitude ice volume, while the strengthening of the AuSM during the middle to late Holocene was mainly controlled by increased Southern Hemisphere summer insolation. The combination of Asian and Australian monsoon records show that the coupling evolution of A-AuMS was dominated by the temperature gradient between two hemispheres, which involve the changes of the AMOC, Northern Hemisphere ice volumes and solar insolation in both hemispheres.

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Data availability

The element ratios, mean grain size, and organic content data, as well as the reconstructed AuSM index of Bromfield Swamp in this study, have been deposited in the Figshare database (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.26981620).

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Acknowledgements

Financial support for this research was provided by the research projects from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (42207509 (G.S.), 42025304 (H.Y.), 92358302 (H.Y.)), the National Key R&D Program of China (2023YFF0804804 (H.Y.)), and the State Key Laboratory of Loess Science (SKLLQG2225 (G.S.)). We really appreciate Dr. Jianghu Lan and Dr. Gang Xue for their help in the paper revision. We also thank Dr. Jianyong Li for his help during the fieldwork.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Loess Science, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi’an, China

    Ge Shi, Hong Yan, Nanyu Zhao & John Dodson

  2. Xi’an Institute for Innovative Earth Environment Research, Xi’an, China

    Ge Shi

  3. State Key Laboratory of Marine Resource Utilization in South China Sea, Hainan University, Haikou, Hainan, China

    Wenchao Zhang

  4. Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Zhonghui Liu

  5. School of Post-Graduate Studies, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    John Dodson

  6. School of Post-Graduate Studies, Diponegoro University, Semarang, Indonesia

    Hendrik Heijnis

  7. Archaeology and Natural History, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia

    Mark Burrows

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Contributions

H.Y. designed the study; G.S. and W.Z. performed the experiments; G.S. and H.Y. wrote the manuscript with the contribution of Z.L., N.Z., J.D., H.H., and M.B.

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Correspondence to Hong Yan.

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Shi, G., Yan, H., Zhang, W. et al. Modulation of inter-hemispheric temperature gradients on the Holocene Asian-Australian summer monsoon. Nat Commun (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-67951-7

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  • Received: 01 November 2024

  • Accepted: 12 December 2025

  • Published: 26 December 2025

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-67951-7

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