Record of winter monsoon strength

Arising from: G. Yancheva et al. Nature 455, 74-77 (2007); Yancheva et al. replyThe Asian summer monsoon has been precisely reconstructed from the high-resolution record from the speleothem, but reconstruction of the Asian winter monsoon is less satisfactory. Yancheva et al. provide such a reconstruction for the last 16,000 years from the titanium (Ti) content of the sediments of Lake Huguang Maar in coastal South China. However, we argue that the Ti is likely to have come mainly from the catchment and so the Ti content may instead be related to the hydrology of the lake.