Tree-ring based February–April precipitation reconstruction for the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, southeastern China

Abstract

February-April drought strongly affects agriculture and socio-economics in southeastern China, yet its long-term variability has not been assessed due to the shortness of instrumental records. In this study, we reported a 168-year tree-ring width chronology from a steep, low-elevation site with thin soil layers in the Xianxia Mountains, southeastern China. Contrary to the existing chronologies that are mostly temperature sensitive, this chronology contained a strong February-April precipitation signal, indicating great potential for tree-ring based precipitation reconstructions in southeastern China. The reconstruction explained 47.8% of the instrumental variance during 1951-2012. The full reconstruction indicated that there were 3 dry periods

500-yr. precipitation variability in Southern Taihang Mountains, China, and its linkages to ENSO and PDO

“…has been sampled in the Southern Taihang Mountains to build a 657-year long tree-ring chronology (1357-2013). Radial growth of trees in the study area is significantly positively correlated with May precipitation, which is in concert with existing work from nearby sites (Liu et al 2009b;Shi et al 2010Shi et al , 2015; Song et al ). There, the positive correlations with May and June precipitation and negative correlation with May-July temperatures point to the critical role of the soil moisture regime at the onset of the growing season.…”

Wet season precipitation during the past century reconstructed from tree-rings of a tropical dry forest in Southern Ecuador

“…in rainy season). Interestingly, this pattern is similar to teleconnections Tables 4 and 5. between tree-ring based precipitation reconstructions and global SST in southeastern China (Shi et al, 2015). Likewise, dipole-like spatial patterns were found between stable isotope ratios in precipitation across the USA and the North Pacific (Liu et al, 2014).…”

Hydroclimate Change Encoded in Tree Rings of Fengshui Woods in Southeastern China and its Teleconnection With El Niño‐Southern Oscillation

“…Comparison of (a) the tree‐ring chronology with (b) the tree‐ring‐based February–April precipitation reconstruction from 1859 to 2013 (Shi et al, ) and (c) reconstructed dryness/wetness indices based on the historical archives from 1781 to 2000 (Zhang et al, ) over SEC. The interdecadal variations isolated by using a 20‐year fast‐Fourier transform filter are represented by the solid lines.…”