摘要：Stable isotopic records of stalagmites are a powerful tool to reconstruct past climate change because stalagmites yield continuous terrestrial paleocli-mate records and can be dated accu-rately by the U-Th dating method (e.g. McDermott et al. 2004; Fairchild et al. 2006). Figure 1 shows the formation process of stalagmites. In the soil and upper epikarst, water is enriched with pCO2derived from plant respiration and organic matter decay (Fairchild et al. 2006). During its percolation in the carbonate bedrock, water dissolves carbonate components and eventually reaches supersaturation. When the wa-ter emerges into a cave as dripwater, carbon dioxide is degassed into cave air and calcium carbonate precipitates, forming a speleothem. Under the for-mation process described above, sta-lagmites record fluctuations of rainfall and/or temperature on the land sur-face as variation in their ¦Ä18O and ¦Ä13C composition
