Pliocene-Pleistocene weathering intensity in North China: links to temperature and Arctic ice volume

The ZK01 core (88.48°E, 44.25°N) is located in the Junggar Basin along the northern foothills of the Tianshan Mountains in Fukang city, Xinjiang province. Previous lithological, grain size, and petrographic data have revealed that the sedimentary facies of the ZK01 core are predominantly eolian deposits, except for the top 0-75 meters and the middle section between 360-385 meters, which are influenced by local fluvial processes and are considered secondary eolian deposits. Wang et al. (2023) established a high-precision chronological framework for the core using magnetostratigraphy and astronomical tuning, determining that the core sediments from 0 to 425 meters span a duration from 232 ka to 3513 ka. For this study, we collected a total of 197 samples for whole rock mineralogical composition at ~2 m intervals (~16.6 kyr resolution). Semi-quantitative abundance of minerals was calculated by the weighted peak-area percentages of characteristic X-ray diffraction (XRD) peaks. Clay minerals are linked to continental crust weathering processes and are weakly impacted by postdeposition diagenesis and recycled clays; hence they are commonly used to reconstruct paleoclimate changes in geological time. Here, we use smectite/(illite+chlorite) reflect silicate weathering intensity.