May–June precipitation reconstruction of southwestern anatolia, Turkey during the last 900 years from tree rings

Abstract

A May–June precipitation reconstruction (AD 1097–2000) has been developed for southwestern Anatolia in Turkey, the longest reported to date in this region. The reconstruction was derived from a regional Juniperus excelsa chronology that was built from material sampled at four sites in the Antalya and Mersin Districts. The regional tree-ring chronology accounts for 51% of the variance of instrumentally observed May–June precipitation. The years AD 1518 to 1587 are the most humid period in the reconstruction, coinciding with a major shift in European climate. The driest 70-year period in the reconstruction is AD 1195 to 1264. The period AD 1591–1660 represents the third driest and was characterized by instability climatically, politically, and socially in Anatolia.

Tree-ring-based drought reconstruction in the Iberian Range (east of Spain) since 1694

“…A similar metric was considered by Levanic et al (2013) in Eastern Europe where the August SPI integrating 3 preceding months was reconstructed. In general, similar responses to late summer precipitation and annual precipitation were detected for other species in the Mediterranean basin (Touchan et al 2007;Martin-Benito et al 2010;de Luis et al 2013).…”

“…The year 1725 was also reported to have been an extremely dry year with a Int J Biometeorol serious famine and poverty in Romania (Levanic et al 2013). Furthermore, Touchan et al (2007) described 1725 as Bthe year with major drought in Anatolia and Syria.^The period 1749-1753 was very poor in terms of wheat harvest due to droughts having enormous socio-economic impact.…”

Spring temperature variability over Turkey since 1800 CE reconstructed from a broad network of tree-ring data

“…(Wick et al, 2003;Jones et al, 2006;Roberts et al, , 2012Kuzucuoglu et al, 2011;Woodbridge and Roberts, 2011;Ülgen et al, 2012;Dean et al, 2013) and tree rings, have been used to reconstruct long-term hydroclimate conditions over Turkey. Tree rings in particular have shown to provide useful information about the past climate of Turkey and were used intensively during the last decade to reconstruct precipitation in the Aegean (Griggs et al, 2007), Black Sea (Akkemik et al, , 2008Martin-Benitto et al, 2016), Mediterranean regions (Touchan et al, 2005a), as well as the Sivas (D'Arrigo and Cullen, 2001), southwestern (Touchan et al, 2003(Touchan et al, , 2007Köse et al, 2013), south-central and western Anatolian regions of Turkey. These studies used tree rings to reconstruct precipitation because available moisture is often found to be the most important limiting factor that influences radial growth of many tree species in Turkey.…”

Crossdating Juniperus procera from North Gondar, Ethiopia

“…Bräuning 2001;Grießinger et al 2008;Touchan et al , 2005Touchan et al , 2007Treydte et al 2006). The development of successful crossdating strategies for J. procera is important to extend these networks into Africa.…”