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December–March temperature reconstruction from tree-ring earlywood width in southeastern China during the period of 1871–2016

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Abstract

Extremely cold temperatures are a significant threat to agriculture and transportation in winter in southeastern China. However, due to the shortness of instrumental records and the scarcity of long-term temperature reconstructions, more high-quality temperature reconstructions are still needed to fully examine their spatial-temporal variability over the past several centuries. In this study, we built an earlywood width (EWW) chronology, a latewood width (LWW) chronology, and a tree-ring width (TRW) chronology using tree-ring samples of Pinus taiwanensis Hayata from the western Tianmu Mountains and the Xianyu Mountains in southeastern China. The tree growth–climate relationships were analyzed, and we found the strongest correlation between December and March mean temperature and the EWW chronology. The December–March mean temperature history was then reconstructed over the period of 1871–2016 using a linear regression model, which is the first EWW-based temperature reconstruction in southeastern China. With a higher explained variance (47.0%) than that (31.7%) of a previous reconstruction using a TRW chronology, the quality of the model has largely improved. This reconstruction was also comparable with other nearby records, further demonstrating the reliability of our new model. Furthermore, our reconstruction exhibits a significantly negative relationship with the East Asian winter monsoon index (EAWMI) since the 1920s, which may be attributed to the obviously enhanced EAWMI thereafter.

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Acknowledgments

The study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41671193), the Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2016YFA0600503), and the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (Grant No. BK20161394). We thank Mr. Yanwu Shi for his help in tree-ring collection and Dr. Rong Hu for improving the language.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Geography and Ocean Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210023, China

    Weijie Zhang, Jiangfeng Shi, Yesi Zhao, Shiyuan Shi, Xiaoqi Ma & Yuxin Zhu

  2. Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, 85721, USA

    Jiangfeng Shi

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  1. Weijie Zhang
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  3. Yesi Zhao
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Contributions

WZ and JS designed the study. JS provided the tree-ring samples. WZ performed the tree-ring width measurements, data analyses, and interpretation. JS, YZ, SS, and XM assisted in data interpretation. WZ wrote the first draft of the paper. All the authors revised the paper.

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Correspondence to Jiangfeng Shi.

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Zhang, W., Shi, J., Zhao, Y. et al. December–March temperature reconstruction from tree-ring earlywood width in southeastern China during the period of 1871–2016. Int J Biometeorol 65, 883–894 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-020-02067-9

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