Tropical South Atlantic influence on Northeastern Brazil precipitation and ITCZ displacement during the past 2300 years

Recent paleoclimatic studies suggest that changes in the tropical rainbelt across the Atlantic Ocean during the past two millennia are linked to a latitudinal shift of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) driven by the Northern Hemisphere (NH) climate. However, little is known regarding other potential drivers that can affect tropical Atlantic rainfall, mainly due to the scarcity of adequate and high-resolution records. In this study, we fill this gap by reconstructing precipitation changes in Northeastern Brazil during the last 2,300 years from a high-resolution lake record of hydrogen isotope compositions of plant waxes. We find that regional precipitation along the coastal area of South America was not solely governed by north-south displacements of the ITCZ due to changes in NH climate, but also by the contraction and expansion of the tropical rainbelt due to variations in sea surface temperature and southeast trade winds in the tropical South Atlantic Basin.This work was supported by the Fundação de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP), Brazil through NSF Dimensions-Biota FAPESP grant 2013/50297 and PIRE NSF-FAPESP Grants 2017/50085-3 to F.W.C as well as the post-doc fellowship to V.F.N (2016/15807-5) and the US National Science Foundation NSF grants AGS-1303828 and OISE-1743738 to MV and 1103403 to R.L.E and H.C. We thank Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior, Brazil (CAPES) fellowship to G.U. Grant 99999.012754/2013-07 as well as the post-doc fellowship through the Postgraduate Program on Geochemistry and Geotectonics, Geoscience Institute of the University of São Paulo