The rapid climate fluctuations (abrupt events) have been reported in a worldwide region,which have attracted lots of attention in Quaternary paleoclimate field.With the increasing of high-resolution geological records from different regions and the improvement of dating methods,regional differences of ages and amplitudes have been observed,the driving mechanism and involved areas of these events are still controversial.Previous studies of the abrupt climate events are mainly from polar ice cores,deep-sea sediments and loess,stalagmites,lacustrine sediments in the East Asian monsoon region,whereas such events have a noticeable lack of reports from the westerlies-dominated arid Central Asia.Comparing the details of changes between these regions is helpful to understand the regularity and driving mechanisms of rapid climate change.In this paper,we report rapid climate oscillation recorded in the loess deposits from arid Central Asia.Central Asia is one of the most significant loess regions on Earth,located between the well-studied European loess sequences to the west and the extensive Chinese Loess Plateau to the east.Widely distributed loess in alluvial plains,terraces and piedmonts of the Tianshan Mountains and adjacent area has provided an opportunity to identify rapid climate fluctuations in Central Asia.Based on the investigations of loess characteristics and the modern climatic features,we propose that the Central Asia loess belt can be divided into three sub-regions(zones).Zone I affected by Mediterranean climate and Indian monsoon is located at the south of Western Tianshan and the west to longitude 75° E,it has obvious loess-paleosol sequences,and the paleosol units have strong pedogenesis and high susceptibility values,which are comparable to those of the CLP.Zone located in the north of the Tianshan Mountains,the climate involves the Siberian High and the Arctic air mass,no obvious pedogenesis phenomenon can be observed in the low altitude area,and the magnetic susceptibility value is inconsistent with the stratum,but weak pedogenesis can be found in high altitude mountainous areas with abundant precipitation.Zone Ⅲ mainly located in the Tarim Basin,because of the extreme drought climate,there are no obvious pedogenesis in loess sediments.This paper reviews the state-of-the-art status and problems of the rapid climate oscillation recorded in Central Asian loess during the last glacial period,and preliminarily discusses their formation process and driving mechanism.Several proxies e.g.grain size,mineralogy and geochemistry indicate that these millennial-scale abrupt climate events such as Heinrich and Dansgaard-Oeschger events during the last glacial period were undoubtedly imprinted in Central Asian loess,however,there are regional differences in the time and variability to some extent.We speculate that these differences are not only related to precise and reliable geochronological methods but also related to hydrothermal combination of regional climate and local topographical characteristics.Moreover,it is concluded that occurrences of these abrupt cold/warm events are closely linked to the retreat and expansion of the ice sheet in the high-latitudes regions of North Atlantic,the changes in intensity and extent of the Siberian High pressure and shifts of the mid-latitude westerlies belts swinging northward in warm periods and southward in cold periods.In the future,we should pay more attention to establishing high-resolution chronology sequences of Central Asian loess,to developing more effective indicators which can independently reflect wind intensity,distinguish provenances,reconstruct paleotemperature and paleoprecipitation,and it is also crucial to combine paleoclimate model simulations to study their possible driving mechanism.