Records of eolian quartz from two continuous sediment sequences drilled in Lagaccione and Lago di Vico volcanic lakes in central Italy contribute to the knowledge of eolian deposition in the central Mediterranean during the last 100,000 years. The chronology is based on 14C and 40Ar/39Ar dating and tephra analysis. Pollen data provide the paleoenvironmental framework and enable correlation between the cores. Eolian inputs were high during the steppe phases corresponding to oxygen isotope stages 4 and 2. Low inputs correspond to the forest phases of the last interglacial and the middle Holocene. Eolian inputs have increased in the late Holocene. Patterns of eolian deposition in central Italy resemble the Antarctic dust record from the Vostok ice core. The Italian patterns may also correspond with hydrological changes registered in North Africa. The main source of dust loading over the Mediterranean now, North Africa, may have played an important role in dust supply throughout the last climatic cycle.

We have obtained a high-resolution sedimentary record covering the last 6500 yr from a maar in Cheju Island, Korea, in order to reconstruct the history of variations in the eolian quartz flux (EQF) and hence Asian dust. The long-term variation of EQF reveals three intervals: a period of high EQF (4000–2000 cal yr B.P.) and two periods of low EQF (6500–4000 cal yr B.P. and 2000 cal yr B.P. to present), which have been affected by the East Asian monsoon due to insolation change and the cold air activity in high latitudes correlated with polar high-pressure systems. This long-term variation is superimposed by millennial- and centennial-scale fluctuations with periodicities of 1137, 739, 214, 162, 137, 127, and 111 yr, implying drier conditions in the source areas in China. The detrended EQF record correlates visually and statistically (cross-spectral analysis) with the atmospheric Δ14C record (solar proxy). The centennial-scale variability in EQF may be affected by the solar activity through the Sun–East Asian monsoon linkage.