Graphical abstract

Introduction

The building of high topography following the collision of India with Eurasia sometime in the early Cenozoic is proposed to have played a fundamental role in strengthening the Asian monsoon in South and East Asia (Kutzbach et al. 1993; Molnar et al. 1993). In turn, the monsoon climate is believed to feed back on the development of the mountains via surface processes and to partially control the tectonic evolution of the fold belts that have developed since the time of initial India-Eurasia collision (Clift et al. 2008; Whipple 2009; Willett 1999). In doing so, these interactions between the solid Earth and the atmosphere represent one of the world’s great natural laboratories for studying the interplay of climate and tectonics over long periods of geological time. In particular, the Western Himalaya are a classic example of this interaction, despite being on the NW margin of the monsoon rainfall, which is centered instead around the Bay of Bengal. In fact, because of their location on the edge of the monsoon region, the Western Himalaya are more sensitive to changes in rainfall as monsoon precipitation waxed and waned. This area also has the advantage of having relatively well-documented, long-duration, marine paleoceanographic records (Prell et al. 1992; Kroon et al. 1991; Gupta et al. 2015), which can be compared readily with contemporaneous continental records.

### Language ###
English

### Assessment ###
The text mentions a specific location that is particularly sensitive to monsoon changes, making this a good target for a geographical information query.

### Query ###
Tell me which region of the Himalayas is most sensitive to monsoon rainfall variations.
Tell me which region of the Himalayas is most sensitive to monsoon rainfall variations.