THE SCIENTIFIC LEGACY OF STEPHEN C. PORTER: FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR RESEARCH ON CLIMATE DYNAMICS THROUGH REGIONAL AND GLOBAL CORRELATIONS

Porter has made landmark contributions to the rapid development of Quaternary geology in China. We review issues associated with his past works on Chinese loess, paleomonsoon changes and dynamics, regional and global change connections through tectonic to millennial time scales and provide perspective on future research and suggestions for investigation practice. In doing so, we highlight the early case studies of Porter on Heinrich events recorded in the Chinese loess, abrupt climatic signals tele-connecting with those identified in the North Atlantic regions, as well as the advances that have been made following his pioneering investigations. In recent years, we have witnessed a deeper understanding of the global monsoon at various time scales and developed a rich array of correlations and dynamic linkages with major features recorded in other places around the world to address the global forcings impacts and monsoon response mechanisms. Although much has been accomplished in this area, much remains to be done before we can advance more fully our understanding, assessment, and prediction of the coming dramatic climatic changes. It is getting more important to better clarify the links between the regional and global dynamics. Studies on internal interactions of land-air-sea (e.g., thermohaline circulation, sea-ice extent, sea surface temperature), which might be related to solar output and anthropogenic forcing (e.g., greenhouse gases, aerosols, and land use), are underway to evaluate their impacts on centennial to intraseasonal monsoon variability. Future studies welcome contributions of terrestrial and marine proxy data from the tele-connected regions, sensitivity and transient modeling results, and data-model integration related to the changes of interactive components (e.g. ice, CO2, ITCZ, ocean circulations) within the climate system. The proposed international Latitudinal Correlation Project (LCP) on global comparisons with common standard and modeling approach of evidence-based connections will vigorously promote the innovation and dissemination of Quaternary research.