A Drought Reconstruction from the Low-Elevation Juniper Forest of Northwestern Kyrgyzstan since CE 1565

Abstract

Naryn River provides large amounts of water resource for Central Asian countries. Thus, the severity and frequency of drought variation relate to runoff has important influences on social and economic development of this region. In this study, the new tree-ring width chronologies of juniper trees from the low-elevation site of the western Tien Shan are used to reconstruct drought variation for northwestern Kyrgyzstan and place the short instrumental period of Standardised Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) in a long-term context. The SPEI reconstruction successfully reflects the dry and wet periods over the past 451 years, and captures a recent wetting trend that generally agrees with the drought reconstructions for the spruce-dominated area. However, some differences between the tree-ring records from spruce-dominated and juniper-dominated areas reflect regional climate differences. The comparison between drought events in the SPEI reconstruction and historical event of Central Asia reveals drought variations have had profound influences on some historical archives over the past several centuries. This study provides the first long-term SPEI reconstruction and drought evaluation from the low-altitude area of Central Asia, contributing to climate change issues in Central Asia.

Possible Underlying Mechanisms of Severe Decadal Droughts in Arid Central Asia During the Last 530 Years: Results From the Last Millennium Climate Reanalysis Project Version 2.0

“…However, the LMR v2.0 underestimates the severity of the drought from 1709 CE to 1733 CE and misses the drought of 1937-1953 CE which detected in the RAP. These five well-agreement droughts of 1519-1538CE, 1545-1561CE, 1621-1658CE, 1822-1846CE, and 1964-1983 CE and other two droughts identified by the RAP of 1709-1733CE and 1937-1953 CE are also revealed by other PDSI or SPEI reconstructions and observations (F. Chen et al, 2019;Fang et al, 2010;Ta et al, 2018;G. Xu et al, 2019;H.…”

“…Although the LMR v2.0 shows a drought event occurring from 1662 CE to 1682 CE in ACA, comparatively wet conditions are found in the RAP. Because other proxy data in ACA also did not reveal this drought (F. Chen et al, 2019;Fang et al, 2010;G. Xu et al, 2019), it is possible that the LMR v2.0 overestimates the drought of 1662-1682 CE.…”

On the Paleo-climatic/Environmental Impacts and Socio-Cultural System Resilience along the Historical Silk Road

“…The study on climate-related dryness, famine and diseases in the Eastern Turkic Empire suggested that the climatic factor did have an impact on the historical processes that took place in the nomadic territories (Ganiev and Kukarskih 2019). As we stated before, dryness is the major natural threat for most of the Silk Road areas especially over the last millennium when human activities have increased dramatically (Opała-Owczarek and Owczarek 2019;Chen et al 2019).…”