X-ray fluorescence core scanning records of chemical weathering and monsoon evolution over the past 5 Myr in the southern South China Sea

with benthic foraminiferal d 18 O reveal that phases of the East Asian summer monsoon abruptly changed by more than 90° at 4.0 Ma, 2.75 Ma, 1.0 Ma and 0.6 Ma relative to global ice volume at the obliquity and the precession bands over the past 5 Myr. Strong 400 kyr and 100 kyr cycles in the K/Al and Ti/Al records consistently exist over the past 5 Myr. Particularly, these cycles are highly coherent with the long and short eccentricity cycles in the truncated insolation at 65°N, indicating an eccentricity forcing of the East Asian summer monsoon. The chemical weathering recorded in the elemental records of ODP Site 1143 also shows highly coherent relationship with the ocean carbon reservoir at the eccentricity, the obliquity and the precession bands over the late Pliocene and Pleistocene.