February–May temperature reconstruction based on tree-ring widths of Abies fargesii from the Shennongjia area in central China

Abstract

February-May temperature strongly affects ecological processes and socio-economics in central China, yet its long-term variability has not been thoroughly assessed due to the shortness of instrumental records. In order to improve the understanding of the regularities of temperature variability in central China, in this study, we present a new tree-ring chronology from the Shengnongjia Mountains in central China which provides a valuable 245-year record of temperature variability. The reconstructed temperature correlated strongly with February-May mean temperature records of the Fangxian meteorological station from AD 1958 to AD 2011, and the derived reconstruction explained 44.5 % of the instrumental temperature variation during this period. The study shows that this region experienced three warm periods and two cool periods, i.e., the major warm periods occurred in AD 1783-1806, AD 1879-1909, and AD 1975 to the present, whereas the cool intervals occurred in AD 1807 -1878 and AD 1910 -1974. This reconstruction could aid in the evaluation of regional climate variability in subtropical China.

Seasonal Dynamics of Stem Radial Increment of Pinus taiwanensis Hayata and Its Response to Environmental Factors in the Lushan Mountains, Southeastern China

“…Temperatures as the growth-limiting factor during spring and early summer confirms the results from dendroclimatological studies of Taiwan pine in southeast China, in which radial growth was positively correlated to temperatures during February-July [13,15,36,70,71]. Also, the early-season temperature constraint on tree-ring width was reported for other conifers in subtropical China [72]. Nevertheless, non-significant relationships between precipitation and tree-ring width were obtained in these dendroclimatic studies.…”

Recent warming evidence inferred from a tree-ring-based winter-half year minimum temperature reconstruction in northwestern Yichang, South Central China, and its relation to the large-scale circulation anomalies

“…Another possibility is that in addition to the EAWM influence, human activity or other undetected factors may also be responsible for the recent winter warming in South Central China. Similar conclusion was also drawn by Zheng et al (2016) in the nearby Shenongjia region. Moreover, the running variance of the temperature reconstruction since the late 1980s exceeded the 95 % confidence interval for stochastic variations (Fig.…”

“…The limiting effect of previous winter-time temperature was widely reported for different species in humid Southern China, such as Pinus taiwanensis Hayata and P. massoniana in Southeast China (Shi et al 2010;Chen et al 2012;Duan et al 2012) and Abies fargesii in Shennongjia (Dang et al 2013;Zheng et al 2016). The significant positive relationship between winter-time temperature and tree growth was also reported in eastern Qinling Mountains for Pinus tabulaeformis (Liu et al 2009b), Pinus armandii Franch (Shi et al 2009), and Abies chensiensis (Chen et al 2015), and in Northeastern China for Pinus koraiensis (Zhu et al 2009).…”

Tree-Ring Width Data of Tsuga longibracteata Reveal Growing Season Temperature Signals in the North-Central Pearl River Basin since 1824 AD

“…The major cold period in the 1890s-1950s was also found in all the four series, especially the extremely low temperatures in the 1890s, 1900s, and 1950s. The cold period in 1820s-1850s was also consistent with the treering based February-May temperature reconstruction from central China [63]. Moreover, remarkable warming since the 1990s was observed in all the temperature series, suggesting that tree growth was effective at capturing the rapid warming signal in the area.…”

“…Three major warm (1857-1890, 1964-1976, and 1992-2016) and cold (1824-1856, 1891-1963, and 1977-1991) periods were detected in the reconstruction period from 1824 to 2016. To further verify the reconstructed pMar-pOct mean temperature, three temperature series from nearby regions in central and south-central China were compared to our reconstruction (Figure 8), including the NCDC gridded GHCN v4.0.1 pMar-pOct temperature anomalies over the region of 20 • -40 • N and 100 • -120 • E over the period of 1900-2016 [50], the phenological and natural evidence based growing season temperature reconstruction during 1850-2008 in south-central China [62], and the tree-ring based February-May temperature reconstruction during 1824-2011 from the Shennongjia area in central China [63]. These three temperature records are significantly correlated with our reconstruction during their common periods (Figure 8).…”