A 211‐year growing season temperature reconstruction using tree‐ring width in Zhangguangcai Mountains, Northeast China: linkages to the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans

Abstract

Northeast China is one of the most vulnerable areas to climate change in high latitude regions of the Northern Hemisphere. The past temperature variations are critical to reveal the driving mechanism of climate change and to reduce the uncertainty in predicting future climates. Pre‐instrument climatic variability is poorly understood, because of the scarcity of centuries‐long climatic data. Here, we present a 211‐year (1803–2013) growing season (May–July) temperature reconstruction based on tree‐ring width chronology of Korean pine (Pinus koraiensis) from Zhangguangcai Mountains in Northeast China. The reconstruction accounted for 41.3% of the temperature variance during the calibration period from 1959 to 2013. The temperature reconstruction was similar to other nearby temperature reconstructions and correlated well spatially to gridded land and ocean surface temperature data. We identified four major cold periods (1839–1846, 1884–1901, 1906–1908 and 1941–1958) and three major warm periods (1855–1880, 1918–1932 and 1998–2013) in the past 211 years. The multi‐taper method spectral analysis revealed significant cycles at 48.8, 11.5, 8.9, 3.9, 3.5 and 2–3 years, which might be associated with global climate oscillations and land‐sea thermal contrasts, such as the sea surface temperatures, El Niño‐Southern Oscillation, Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and solar activity.

Autumn–winter minimum temperature changes in the southern Sikhote-Alin mountain range of northeastern Asia since 1529 AD

“…These high-frequency (2-7 years) cycles (Bradley et al, 1987) have also been found in other treering-based temperature reconstructions in northeastern Asia (Zhu et al, 2009;Li and Wang, 2013;Zhu et al, 2016;Gao et al, 2015). The 2-3-year quasi-cycles may also correspond to the quasi-biennial oscillation (Labitzke and van Loon, 1999) and the tropospheric biennial oscillation (Meehl, 1987).…”

“…We suppose that a 9-year cycle may be related to solar activity, as, first of all, many authors showed influence of solar activity on the climate variability (Bond et al, 2001;Lean and Rind, 1999;Lean, 2000;Mann et al, 2009;Zhu et al, 2016). Secondly, the significant correlation between of the August-December minimum temperature reconstruction and TSI can be regarded as additional evidence of this assumption.…”

“…This finding is why a stable correlation between P. koraiensis growth and the growth season temperature is revealed. This finding is also why moisture availability in soil might be the main limiting factor for Korean pine growth (Zhu et al, 2016), but the emergence of this circumstance can be different in different conditions.…”

“…However, the temperature has various limiting effects in different conditions, and these limiting effects manifest in different ways . For example, Zhu et al (2016) indicate that in the more northern and arid conditions of the Zhangguangcai Mountains, while precipitation is not the main limiting factor, precipitation is considerably lower than evaporation during the growth season. This finding is why a stable correlation between P. koraiensis growth and the growth season temperature is revealed.…”

Response of <i>Pinus sylvestris</i> var. <i>mongolica</i> to water change and the reconstruction of drought history for the past 260 years in northeast China

“…suggesting that higher winter and spring temperatures prolong the growth period and increased nutrient availability for 218 trees during the summer (Hollesen et al 2015; Zhu et al 2017). This phenomenon might be due to the relatively humid 219 climate and the northern latitude of our study sites, where the positive effect of temperature was greater than the 220 negative effect resulting from drought stress .…”