Hydroclimate in the Pamirs Was Driven by Changes in Precipitation‐Evaporation Seasonality Since the Last Glacial Period

Publisher's version (útgefin grein). ; The Central Asian Pamir Mountains (Pamirs) are a high-altitude region sensitive to climatic change, with only few paleoclimatic records available. To examine the glacial-interglacial hydrological changes in the region, we analyzed the geochemical parameters of a 31-kyr record from Lake Karakul and performed a set of experiments with climate models to interpret the results. δD values of terrestrial biomarkers showed insolation-driven trends reflecting major shifts of water vapor sources. For aquatic biomarkers, positive δD shifts driven by changes in precipitation seasonality were observed at ca. 31–30, 28–26, and 17–14 kyr BP. Multiproxy paleoecological data and modelling results suggest that increased water availability, induced by decreased summer evaporation, triggered higher lake levels during those episodes, possibly synchronous to northern hemispheric rapid climate events. We conclude that seasonal changes in precipitation-evaporation balance significantly influenced the hydrological state of a large waterbody such as Lake Karakul, while annual precipitation amount and inflows remained fairly constant. ; We are grateful to K. Adler and T. Jonas for help during coring and M. Rincon and M. Poehle for help during sample cleanup and δD analysis. Financial support to B. A. was provided by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in the form of two travel grants and by the German Science Foundation (DFG; project Ai 134/2‐1 and 2‐2). Q. Z. acknowledges support from the Swedish Research Council VR project 2013‐06476. The simulations with CAM3 and EC‐Earth were performed on resources provided by the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC) at NSC and Cray XC30 HPC systems at ECMWF. We acknowledge two anonymous reviewers whose comments improved the manuscript. ; Peer Reviewed