Modeling precipitation δ<sup>18</sup>O pariability in East Asia since the Last Glacial Maximum: temperature and amount effects across different time scales

Abstract. Water isotope in precipitation has played a key role in the reconstruction of past climate on millennial and longer timescales. However, for mid-latitude regions like East Asia with complex terrain, the reliability behind the basic assumptions of the temperature effect and amount effect are based on modern observational data and still remains unclear for past climate. In the present work, we re-examine the two basic effects on seasonal, interannual, and millennial timescales in a set of time slice experiments for the period 22 ka thru 00 ka using an isotope-enable AGCM. Our study confirms the robustness of the temperature and amount effects on the seasonal cycle over China, with the temperature effect dominating in northern China, and the amount effect dominating in deep southern China, but no one distinct in the transition region of central China. However, our analysis does not show significant temperature and amount effects over China on millennial and interannual timescales, which is a challenge to those classic assumptions in past climate reconstruction. Our work helps shed light on the interpretation of the proxy record of δ18O from modeling point of view.