Evolution and Mechanism of the Paleoceanographic Environment in the Western Pacific During the Late Cenozoic

The Western Pacific has a significant impact on regional and global climate changes through the hydrological and carbon cycles during the late Cenozoic. In the present paper, we review the evolution and mechanism of the paleoceanography and paleoenvironment in the Western Pacific from the following aspects: the Pliocene evolutions of the Western Pacific Warm Pool and its main current, the late Quaternary evolutions of the North Pacific Intermediate Water and the Bering Strait opening and closing, the Quaternary evolution of shelf environment in the Eastern China, and the source-to-sink process and carbon burial of the Cenozoic Asia-Pacific sediments. Since the Pliocene, the evolutions of the Western Pacific Warm Pool and the Indonesian throughflow has formed in stages along with tectonic movements, but the details of their evolutions on the orbital timescales are still not clear. Key high-latitude processes such as the North Pacific Intermediate Water and the Opening and Closing of the Bering Strait have varied significantly during glacial-interglacial cycles and are remotely correlated with low-latitude processes. The evolution of Quaternary shelf environment in the Eastern China is mainly controlled by sea level fluctuation and the heat- and material- transfer associated with low-latitude processes. Under these conditions the Shelf has formed a slurry sedimentary system rich in organic carbon. Sediment source-to-sink processes in continental Asia and adjacent oceans driven by tectonic uplift and Asian monsoons have significant carbon sink effects and may have played an important role in the glacial-interglacial atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration (p_\rmC\rmO_2 ) variations and the Cenozoic climate cooling. Conducting in-depth and systematic research on a number of key scientific issues in the evolution and mechanism of the paleoceanography and paleoenvironment in the Western Pacific Ocean can not only provide a basis for establishing the theory of low-latitude forcing of climate change, but also may help to improve our understanding of the environmental change and the carbon sink potential of China's continental shelf.