| Session Details | |
| Section | IG - Interdisciplinary Geosciences |
| Session Title | Late Quaternary Evolution of the Tropical Monsoon Systems in Asia and Australasia and Linkages to High Latitude Climate Change |
| Main Convener | Prof. James Shulmeister (University of Queensland, Australia) |
| Co-convener(s) | Dr. Rathnasiri Premathilake (University of Kelaniya, Colombo, Sri Lanka) Dr. Patrick Moss (University of Queensland, Australia) |
| Session Description | The tropical monsoon systems of South Asia, East Asia and Indonesia-Indo China-Australia are critical components of the global circulation system but the long term history and drivers of many of these systems are poorly understood. The teleconnections to and from the monsoons and the lags and leads associated with these connections are also debated. A particular gap in understanding are the roles of decadal, centennial and longer scale oscillatory systems in modulating the monsoons. This session will focus on the position of the ITCZ and the variability and extent of influence of the three major monsoon systems of our region: the Indian, East Asian and Australian-Indonesian-Indo China, over the past 50 ky. We invite papers on palaeoclimatological reconstructions of changes in monsoon systems from high resolution records such as corals and speleothems and lower resolution proxies, modelling of monsoon long-term behaviour and papers that seek to develop an understanding of climate links between the high latitudes and the monsoons, including investigations of lags and leads in teleconnections. This session will be a contribution to the OZ-INTIMATE working group, which looks to integrate ice core, marine and terrestrial palaeoclimate records from the Australian region and CELL-50k, an International Focus Group of the INQUA Paleoclimate Commission, focusing on calibrating environmental leads and lags across the globe. We hope this session will stimulate research of the important role of the tropics in global circulation and better understanding the relationship between the three monsoons in our region. |