Role of the Summer Monsoon Variability in the Collapse of the Ming Dynasty: Evidences From Speleothem Records

Climatic changes have played an important role in societal reorganizations. Particularly, the late 16th and early 17th century coincided with severely cold condition, extremely weak summer monsoon and widespread population decline in China. Here we present new speleothem oxygen isotope records across North and South China, which in concert with historical documents, allow us to characterize the “Late Ming Weak Monsoon Periods” (LMWMP) at an unprecedented annual temporal resolution. Our analysis suggests that as a weak summer monsoon event not seen for nearly 500 years in China, the LMWMP spatiotemporally coincided with the late Ming Dynasty peasant uprising (1627–1658 CE), and thus the transition from Ming to Qing Dynasty. This suggests a plausible role of climate change in shaping the important chapters of the Chinese history. In addition, both speleothem and historical documents reveal that the LMWMP appears to be a north to south time-transgressive event on decadal-timescale.