2026-02-01 GLOBAL AND PLANETARY CHANGE 2026 257(卷), null(期), (null页)
Most geological materials record temperature changes at land/ocean surface rather than air temperatures. However, whether their long-term trends exhibit coherence during the Holocene remains debated. Here, we present brGDGT-derived land surface temperature (LST) variations over the past 25 kyr in the western Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP), revealing an overall Holocene cooling trend. Modern meteorological data indicate that surface conditions critically modulate regional LSTs, allowing the surface air temperatures (SATs) to be quantitatively estimated by incorporating vegetation cover and soil moisture. The reconstructed SATs show distinct early Holocene warming, mid-Holocene thermal maximum, and late Holocene cooling, aligning well with simulated SATs and global/regional temperature reconstructions. Our findings reconcile diverging LST and SAT trends through vegetation and moisture feedbacks, offering a new method to clarify land-air thermal interactions and improve proxy-model comparisons in paleoclimatology.