Cretaceous coastal mountain building and potential impacts on climate change in East Asia | Science Advances

Crustal thickness and elevation variations control mountain building and climate change at convergent margins. As an archetypal Andean-type convergent margin, eastern Asia preserves voluminous magmas ideal for quantifying these processes and their impacts on climate. Here, we use Sr/Y and Ce/Y proxies to show that the crust experienced alternating thickening and thinning during the Late Mesozoic. We identify a noticeably thickened (50 to 55 kilometers) crust associated with tectonic shortening at 120 to 105 million years, corresponding to a >2500-meter-high coastal mountain range. Using climate simulation with the Community Earth System Model, we demonstrate that the mountain uplift changed Asian atmospheric circulation and precipitation patterns, increased inland aridity (~15%), and prompted the eastward desert expansion, contributing substantially to the arid zonal belt across mid- to low-latitude Asia. These findings—compatible with independent geological, geophysical, and climatic observations—have global implications for broadening our understanding of Earth-system interactions in the Cretaceous greenhouse world.