Reconstruction of northeast Asia spring temperature 1784–1990

Abstract

Abstract. We describe a first attempt of wide-area dendroclimatic reconstruction, based upon seven spring temperature-sensitive chronologies from the ring widths of living trees, in Japan and Korea. Mean March–May temperature derived from a gridded land air temperature dataset (CRUTEM4) between 35–40° N and 125–140° E was reconstructed for the period of AD 1784–1990. Of the seven, two Japanese chronologies were eliminated during the calibration trials. The reconstruction accounted for 19.4% of the temperature variance in the calibration period, and is considered to be skillful for estimating interannual-to-interdecadal variations and not for long-term change. This reconstruction showed remarkably similar fluctuations to regional dendroclimatic reconstructions in Japan and Korea, indicating the past spatial coherency of spring temperatures in the region. The reconstruction was validated against other climate proxies. A fairly good agreement was found with cold periods as estimated from documentary records in southeast China and Japan. The west Japan temperature series recovered from instrumental records also showed a reasonable agreement with the reconstruction. On the other hand, the reconstruction did not show clear abrupt depressions after the Laki and the Tambora eruptions. These comparisons revealed that dendroclimatic spatial reconstruction in this area offers a good potential for reconstructing long-term and large-scale past temperature patterns for northeast Asia.

A Reconstruction of Subtropical Western North Pacific SST Variability Back to 1578, Based on a Porites Coral Sr/Ca Record from the Northern Ryukyus, Japan

“…Analyses of coral skeletal aragonite for Sr/Ca and oxygen isotopic composition have been widely used since the early 1990s to reconstruct past tropical climate variability (e.g., Tierney et al, 2015;Urban et al, 2000, and references therein), but only a few monthly or seasonally resolved records extend over 200 years (e.g., Asami et al, 2005;DeLong et al, 2012DeLong et al, , 2014. In Japan, the few climate proxies that cover the Little Ice Age (LIA, circa 1550-1700), during which cooling was driven by low solar irradiance, reduced insolation, and stratospheric aerosols from volcanic eruptions (e.g., Ammann et al, 2007), consist of historical documents (Mikami, 2008) and temperature/precipitation tree ring reconstructions for the spring/summer season (Cook et al, 2012;D'Arrigo & Wilson, 2006;D'Arrigo et al, 2014;Ohyama et al, 2013;Sakashita et al, 2016;Yamaguchi et al, 2010). Although the impact of the solar cycle on the global climate is small (Schurer et al, 2014), an amplified regional response to the variability in ultraviolet solar irradiance through atmospheric teleconnections is now widely accepted (e.g., Meehl et al, 2009).…”

Reconstruction of the March–August PDSI since 1703 AD based on tree rings of Chinese pine (<i>Pinus tabulaeformis</i> Carr.) in the Lingkong Mountain, southeast Chinese loess Plateau

“…Annually dated tree rings are preferable climatic proxies for extending the limited modern meteorological record by analysing the relationship between tree-ring indexes and climatic factors, thereby reconstructing the climate history for centuries to millennia (Zhang et al, 2003;Yang et al, 2009;Zhu et al, 2009;Linderholm et al, 2010;Büntgen et al, 2011;Ohyama et al, 2013). Tree rings have been successfully used to investigate drought history throughout the world (Esper et al, 2007;Cook et al, 2010), including arid to semi-arid areas of China (Liang et al, 2006;Chen et al, 2011a;Fang et al, 2012;.…”

Assessment of Northeastern Japan Tree‐Ring Oxygen Isotopes for Reconstructing Early Summer Hydroclimate and Spring Arctic Oscillation

“…Tree-ring records also provide a reconstruction of the summer NAO (Folland et al, 2009). This may relate to the climate response of the tree-ring width in Japan, which is more reflective to temperature than precipitation (e.g., Crowley et al, 2014;Ohyama et al, 2013;Yonenobu & Eckstein, 2006). This may relate to the climate response of the tree-ring width in Japan, which is more reflective to temperature than precipitation (e.g., Crowley et al, 2014;Ohyama et al, 2013;Yonenobu & Eckstein, 2006).…”

“…These cedars were acquired from a mountainous area (within 1 km 2 ) in Akita prefecture (40°21 0 N, 140°20 0 E, 250-450 m above sea level; Figure 1d) and used in a previous study (Ohyama et al, 2013). These cedars were acquired from a mountainous area (within 1 km 2 ) in Akita prefecture (40°21 0 N, 140°20 0 E, 250-450 m above sea level; Figure 1d) and used in a previous study (Ohyama et al, 2013).…”