Late Triassic sedimentary records reveal the hydrological response to climate forcing and the history of the chaotic Solar System

• Published in: Earth and planetary science letters 2023-04, Vol.607, p.118052, Article 118052
• Main Authors: Wang, Meng, Li, Mingsong, Kemp, David B., Landwehrs, Jan, Jin, Zhijun
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: climate model; hydrological change; lacustrine record; Late Triassic; orbital cycle
• ISSN: 0012-821X; 1385-013X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.epsl.2023.118052

The hydrological change plays a vital role in regulating Earth's surface systems. However, understanding past hydrological variations on land is hindered by difficulties in dating and correlating continental strata, and the perceived incompleteness of terrestrial sedimentary successions. Here, we calibrate the astronomical time scale of an Upper Triassic lake sediment succession at St. Audrie's Bay (UK) using recently proposed statistical tuning approaches. A novel statistical completeness evaluation confirms that an optimal correlation of the astronomically calibrated Upper Triassic magnetostratigraphy can be determined between St. Audrie's Bay and well-studied reference sections in the Newark Basin (USA) and Jameson Land Basin (Greenland). Reconstructed lake level changes at St. Audrie's Bay were in-phase with those in the Newark Basin (deposited at a similar tropical paleolatitude), but in anti-phase with those in the high-latitude Jameson Land Basin – a pattern also supported by paleoclimate modeling. A ∼1.8 million-year cyclicity paced hydrological changes in these basins, and represents the fingerprint of chaotic behavior of the Solar System. •Upper Triassic in St. Audrie's Bay is largely complete at 405-kyr scale.•New statistical approach evaluates the completeness of the sedimentary records.•1.8 Myr cyclicity demonstrates the chaotic behavior of the Solar System.•Sedimentary records and climate modeling depict hydrological response to orbital forcing.