The 2014 National Science and Technology Awards Conference was held in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, on January 9, 2015. The project "East Asian Monsoon Climate Variability and Drive Mechanism from Orbit to Interannual Scales in 200 Thousand Years" by Professor Zhang Pingzhong of School of Earth Sciences, Lanzhou University (main participants: Wang Yongjin, Zhang Pingzhong, Tan Ming, Liu Dianbing and Wu Jiangying) won second prize of 2014 National Natural Science Award.
The project took China’s cave isotope geochemistry records as the carrier, described the history of Asian monsoon variability and its drive mechanism and global connections from different time scales, and constructed a relatively complete research system of Chinese stalagmite isotope climate stratigraphy in 200 thousand years. Important scientific discoveries are the followings: the Asian summer monsoon intensity change features a strong precession cycle in the track scale, basically synchronizing with the solar radiation in the northern hemisphere; millennial scale monsoon mutation couples with the Greenland temperature change and the climate background controls millennial mutation frequency and intensity; Holocene Asian monsoon drought events are highly correlated with solar activity; the development of "Micro Layer Stalagmite Chronology and Climate Science" reveals the monsoon interannual climate variability and natural drivers in the past 2000 years. The team has published a series of research papers (including 4 published papers in Science and Nature journals), research results being cited 1889 times by 167 kinds of SCI publications.
(Translated by Li Yafeng; proofread by Sissi Xu)
