Analysis reveals interhemispheric thermal imbalance as key to Asian-Australian monsoon variability

The Asian-Australian monsoon system (A-AuMS) is the world's most typical cross-equatorial coupled monsoon system. On a seasonal timescale, the summer monsoon in one hemisphere is usually linked to the winter monsoon in the other via outflows. However, robust evidence is lacking as to whether such cross-equatorial monsoon coupling persists during orbital-scale paleoclimate evolution. A scarcity of high-resolution paleoclimatic records from the Northern Australian monsoon region in the Southern Hemisphere has limited a full understanding of the A-AuMS's dynamic mechanisms.