Southern hemisphere fire history since the late glacial, reconstructed from an Antarctic sediment core

Recently, devastating fires have caused social disruptions and huge economic losses. Understanding the relationship between natural fires and climate is helpful for predicting future fire activity. Here, we detected biomass burning biomarkers (levoglucosan (Lev), mannosan (Man) and galactosan (Gan)) in a sediment core RN-01 from East Antarctica, and reconstructed the Southern Hemisphere fire history for the past 15.6 kyr. Source analysis shows that the Lev in RN-01 is derived from a mixed Southern Hemisphere source, in which South America is generally the most important. Lev/Man ratios indicate that softwood dominates the burning, although the proportion changes over time. The reconstructed fire activities were more frequent during the late glacial (∼16-14 kyr BP and ∼13-11 kyr BP). Since the Holocene, the fire intensity showed an overall trend of decreasing. Precipitation, which was affected by the latitudinal shift of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) and the Southern Westerly Winds (SWW), plays an important role in the long-term change of fire activity since the late glacial period in the Southern Hemisphere.