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Dryad

Cretaceous coastal mountain building and potential impacts on climate change in East Asia

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Aug 19, 2024 version files 1.10 MB

Abstract

Crustal thickness and elevation variations control mountain building and climate change at convergent margins. As an archetypal Andean-type convergent margin, eastern Asia preserves voluminous subduction-related magmas ideal for quantifying these processes and their impacts on climate. Here we use Sr/Y and Ce/Y proxies to show that the crust experienced alternating thickening and thinning episodes during the Late Mesozoic. We identify a noticeably thickened (50–55 km) crust associated with tectonic shortening at 120-105 Ma, corresponding to the emergence of a > 2500-m-high coastal mountain range. Using climate modeling, we demonstrate that the mountain uplift changed Asian atmospheric circulation and precipitation patterns, increased inland aridity (~ 15 %), and prompted the eastward desert expansion, contributing significantly to the arid zonal belt across mid- to low-latitude Asia. These findings, compatible with independent geological, geophysical, and climatic observations, have global implications for broadening our understanding of Earth-system interactions in the Cretaceous greenhouse world.