Mid-Holocene rainfall heterogeneity in subtropical East Asia

Hai Xu; Jian Cao; Jing Wang; Jun Cheng; Yonaton Goldsmith; Hao Long

doi:10.59717/j.xinn-geo.2026.100225

The Innovation Geoscience > 2026 Vol. 4 > No. 3 > 100225

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Mid-Holocene rainfall heterogeneity in subtropical East Asia

1.
Key Laboratory of Karst Georesources and Environment, Ministry of Education, Guizhou University, Guiyang 550025, China
2.
Institute of Surface-Earth System Science, School of Earth System Science, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China
3.
Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China
4.
Institute of Earth Sciences, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 91904, Israel
5.
Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 211135, China

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Corresponding author: xuhai@tju.edu.cn
Received Date: January 20, 2026

Accepted Date: April 09, 2026

Published Online: April 13, 2026

The Innovation Geoscience 4(3), https://doi.org/10.59717/j.xinn-geo.2026.100225 | Cite this article

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PUBLIC SUMMARY
1. Western Pacific Subtropical High (WPSH) shapes the long-term rainfall heterogeneity in subtropical East Asia.
  
  Mid-Holocene warming intensified the WPSH and led to prolonged droughts in subtropical East Asia.
  
  Late Holocene cooling resulted in a weakened WPSH and increased precipitation in subtropical East Asia.
  
  Solar forcing and the related temperature gradients likely regulate the long-term WPSH behaviors.

ABSTRACT

ABSTRACT

Growing lines of evidence reveal an unexpectedly dry mid-Holocene but wetting late Holocene in subtropical East Asia, which is anti-phase/out-of-phase to the widely recognized northern hemisphere solar-insolation-forced Asia summer monsoon precipitation trend. This asynchrony implies that some key processes are missing in the current understanding of the Asia summer monsoon dynamics across different monsoon subsystems. Here we further confirm this spatial rainfall heterogeneity with robust biogeological evidence, corroborated by archeological evidence and simulations of transient climatic models. We propose that the location and intensity of the western Pacific subtropical high (WPSH) are most likely responsible for the observed orbital/suborbital spatial hydroclimatic heterogeneity, while the tropical Indo-Pacific sea surface temperature (SST), the SST gradients between the west-east equatorial Pacific, as well as the temperature gradients between southern-northern hemispheres, are the governing factors that combinedly regulate the WPSH behaviors and ultimately modulate the orbital/suborbital rainfall heterogeneity in subtropical East Asia.
- Subtropical East Asia /
- Rainfall heterogeneity /
- Asia summer monsoon /
- Western Pacific subtropical high /
- Mid-Holocene drought

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Xu H., Cao J., Wang J., et al. (2026). Mid-Holocene rainfall heterogeneity in subtropical East Asia. The Innovation Geoscience 4:100225. https://doi.org/10.59717/j.xinn-geo.2026.100225

Xu H., Cao J., Wang J., et al. (2026). Mid-Holocene rainfall heterogeneity in subtropical East Asia. The Innovation Geoscience 4:100225. https://doi.org/10.59717/j.xinn-geo.2026.100225

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Mid-Holocene rainfall heterogeneity in subtropical East Asia

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