SGER: Formation Time and Past Changes in the Atmospheric Circulation System over Northwest Mongolia--A Pilot Study of Lake Hovsgol Sedimentary Proxy Records

University South Carolina Research Foundation, Columbia SC

Investigators

Abstract

This award, under the auspices of the Small Grants for Exploratory Research (SGER) program, will analyze select sediment cores collected from Mongolia's largest water body, Lake Hovsgol, to determine their suitability for detailed paleoclimatic investigations. Ultimately, the researchers want to test the hypothesis that atmospheric circulation during the Holocene period was undergoing periodic fluctuations capable of causing pronounced changes in the regional precipitation regime in northwest Mongolia leading to droughts and desertification in the area where 75% of present-day population of Mongolia now resides. Lake Hovsgol, whose water budget is strongly dependent on the regional precipitation pattern, is ideally located to examine large-scale changes in atmospheric circulation as it lies beneath the Siberian High and the moisture-bearing westerlies. At this point in time, however, it is not clear if the recovered cores are of sufficient quality to answer any of the posed science questions. So, the research will address the following three basic questions: What is the age span of the new recovered Lake Hovsgol cores? What proxies of lacustrine sedimentation and productivity might be most useful to indicate regional climate changes? When did the present-day climatic system in the Lake Hovsgol area of continental interior Asia become established and how variable was it through time? This basic information will have broad impact in providing an understanding of climate variability in northwest Mongolia from the Last Glacial Maximum through the Holocene.