Four Centuries of Summer Temperature Changes in Tierra Del Fuego: Atmospheric Drivers and Tree-Ring Reconstruction From the Southernmost Forests of the World

Author(s):  
Vladimir Matskovsky ◽  
Fidel A. Roig ◽  
Mauricio Fuentes ◽  
Irina Korneva ◽  
Diego Araneo ◽  
...  

Abstract Proxy climate records, such as those derived from tree rings, are necessary to extend relatively short instrumental meteorological observations into the past. Tierra del Fuego is the most austral territory with forests in the world, situated close to the Antarctic Peninsula, which makes this region especially interesting for paleoclimatic research. However, high-quality, high-resolution summer temperature reconstruction are lacking in the region. In this study we used 63 tree-ring width chronologies of Nothofagus pumilio and Nothofagus betuloides and partial least squares regression (PLSR) to produce annually resolved December-to-February temperature reconstruction since AD 1600 which explains up to 65% of instrumental temperature variability. We also found that observed summer temperature variability in Tierra del Fuego is primarily driven by the fluctuations of atmospheric pressure systems both in the South Atlantic and South Pacific, while it is insignificantly correlated to major hemispheric modes: ENSO and SAM. This fact makes our reconstruction important for climate modelling experiments, as it represents specific regional variability. Our reconstruction can be used for direct comparison with model outputs to better understand model limitations or to tune a model or contribute to larger scale reconstructions based on paleoclimatic data assimilation. Moreover, we showed that PLSR has improved performance over principal component regression (PCR) in the case of multiple tree-ring predictors. According to these results, PLSR may be a preferable method over PCR for the use in automated tree-ring based reconstruction approaches, akin widely used point-by-point regression.

Author(s):  
Zulfiyor Bakhtiyorov ◽  
Ruide Yu ◽  
Akylai Monoldorova ◽  
Zhijie Ta ◽  
Javhar Aminov

Despite the ecological importance of forest tree species, our study was motivated by scarce data on dendrochronology studies limited to the northwestern part of Tajikistan due to lack of access to such a part of the country which is difficult to access. Current studies on Junipers in the northwestern part of Tajikistan identified that tree ring-based climate reconstruction is possible. Cores of Juniperus Turkestanica from Taboshar area, Sogd province were developed into 176-year tree-ring width chronology. In the current study a summer (June-September) minimum temperature reconstruction spanning AD 1840–2016 was developed, which can explain 30.0% of the instrumental variableness for the period of 1940–2015. Five warmest (1856–1866, 1869–1871, 1907–1916, 1923–1935, 1988–2016) and four coldest time periods (1840–1855, 1872–1906, 1917–1922, 1940–1984) were identified. The developed reconstruction coincides with cold and warm periods with prior investigations from tree-rings in China, Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. Spatial correlation analysis with the gridded minimum temperature data shows that the temperature reconstruction covers geographical representation over High Asia. Significant correlation was found between temperature reconstruction with summer SST, which suggests strong linkages of regional temperature variability with Indian-Ocean climate system. The obtained spectral peaks from the spectral analysis of the summer temperature reconstruction were significantly at 84.7-year (90%), 2.9-year (99%), 2.6-year (99%), 2.5-year (99%), 2.4-year (99%) and 2.2-year (99%).


2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (13) ◽  
pp. 5289-5304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jianglin Wang ◽  
Bao Yang ◽  
Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist

Abstract Although tree-ring-width-based temperature reconstructions of centennial-to-millennial length have previously been published for many parts of the eastern Tibetan Plateau (ETP), a millennium-long regional-scale composite reconstruction with annual resolution has so far been lacking. Here, the authors present a reconstruction of June–August (JJA) temperature variability over the ETP for the period AD 1000–2005 using a nested composite-plus-scale (CPS) approach to 12 temperature-sensitive tree-ring width chronologies, including 946 individual tree-ring width series. The composite reconstruction reveals warm episodes occurring during much of the sixteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries and cold episodes during much of the eleventh, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. The period AD 1996–2005 is likely the warmest decade in the context of the past millennium. The authors explore the influence of possible forcings, finding only a weak direct relationship of temperature changes over the ETP with solar forcing at multidecadal time scales but a robust in-phase relationship with the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation (AMO) during the past millennium. This suggests that the AMO may play an important role in controlling summer temperature variability over the ETP at multidecadal time scales. A comparison with temperature reconstructions from the higher latitudes of East Asia, central-eastern China, and the whole of the Northern Hemisphere shows that the cold eleventh century and the warm nineteenth century prevailing over ETP are somewhat unique, suggesting regional specific characteristics of the temperature variability in this region. This result highlights the need to further increase the number of millennium-long, high-resolution temperature records from East Asia.


2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 1485-1498 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liangjun Zhu ◽  
Yuandong Zhang ◽  
Zongshan Li ◽  
Binde Guo ◽  
Xiaochun Wang

Abstract. We present a reconstruction of July–August mean maximum temperature variability based on a chronology of tree-ring widths over the period AD 1646–2013 in the northern part of the northwestern Sichuan Plateau (NWSP), China. A regression model explains 37.1 % of the variance of July–August mean maximum temperature during the calibration period from 1954 to 2012. Compared with nearby temperature reconstructions and gridded land surface temperature data, our temperature reconstruction had high spatial representativeness. Seven major cold periods were identified (1708–1711, 1765–1769, 1818–1821, 1824–1828, 1832–1836, 1839–1842, and 1869–1877), and three major warm periods occurred in 1655–1668, 1719–1730, and 1858–1859 from this reconstruction. The typical Little Ice Age climate can also be well represented in our reconstruction and clearly ended with climatic amelioration at the late of the 19th century. The 17th and 19th centuries were cold with more extreme cold years, while the 18th and 20th centuries were warm with less extreme cold years. Moreover, the 20th century rapid warming was not obvious in the NWSP mean maximum temperature reconstruction, which implied that mean maximum temperature might play an important and different role in global change as unique temperature indicators. Multi-taper method (MTM) spectral analysis revealed significant periodicities of 170-, 49–114-, 25–32-, 5.7-, 4.6–4.7-, 3.0–3.1-, 2.5-, and 2.1–2.3-year quasi-cycles at a 95 % confidence level in our reconstruction. Overall, the mean maximum temperature variability in the NWSP may be associated with global land–sea atmospheric circulation (e.g., ENSO, PDO, or AMO) as well as solar and volcanic forcing.


2001 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 543-546 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosanne D'Arrigo ◽  
Gordon Jacoby ◽  
David Frank ◽  
Neil Pederson ◽  
Edward Cook ◽  
...  

2007 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. Solomina ◽  
G. Wiles ◽  
T. Shiraiwa ◽  
R. D'Arrigo

Abstract. Tree ring, ice core and glacial geologic histories for the past several centuries offer an opportunity to characterize climate variability and to identify the key climate parameters forcing glacier expansion in Kamchatka over the past 400 years. A newly developed larch ring-width chronology (AD 1632–2004) is presented that is sensitive to past summer temperature variability. Individual low growth years in the larch record are associated with several known and proposed volcanic events from the Northern Hemisphere. The comparison of ring width minima and those of Melt Feature Index of Ushkovsky ice core helps confirm a 1–3 year dating accuracy~for this ice core series over the late 18th to 20th centuries. Decadal variations of low summer temperatures (tree-ring record) and high annual precipitation (ice core record) are broadly consistent with intervals of positive mass balances measured and estimated at several glaciers in 20th century, and with moraine building. According to the tree-ring data the 1860s–1880s were the longest coldest interval in the last 350 years. The latest part of this period (1880s) coincided with the positive anomaly in accumulation. This coincidence led to a positive mass balance, which is most likely responsible for glacier advances and moraine deposition of the end of 19th-early 20th centuries. As well as in some other high latitude regions (Spitsbergen, Polar Urals, Franz Jozef Land etc.) in Kamchatka these advances marked the last millennium glacial maximum. In full agreement with subsequent summer warming trend, inferred both from instrumental and tree ring data, glacier advances since 1880s have been less extensive. The late 18th century glacier expansion coincides with the inferred summer temperature decrease recorded by the ring width chronology. However, both the advance and the summer temperature decrease were less prominent that in the end of 19th century. Comparisons of the glacier history in Kamchatka with records from Alaska and the Canadian Rockies suggests broadly consistent intervals of glacier expansion and inferred summer cooling during solar irradiance minima.


2015 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 80-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathelyn Paredes-Villanueva ◽  
Lidio López ◽  
Matthew Brookhouse ◽  
Rafael María Navarro Cerrillo

2012 ◽  
Vol 77 (3) ◽  
pp. 344-354 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Coppola ◽  
Giovanni Leonelli ◽  
Maria Cristina Salvatore ◽  
Manuela Pelfini ◽  
Carlo Baroni

Tree rings from temperature-limited environments are highly sensitive climate proxies, widely used to reconstruct past climate parameters for periods prior to the availability of instrumental data and to analyse the effect of recent global warming on tree growth. An analysis of the climatic signal in five high-elevation tree-ring width chronologies of European larch (Larix decidua Mill.) from the tops of five different glacial valleys in the Italian Central Alps revealed that they contain a strong summer-temperature signal and that tree-ring growth is especially influenced by June temperatures. However, a moving correlation function analysis revealed a recent loss of the June temperature signal in the tree-ring chronologies. This signal reduction primarily involves the two lowest-altitude chronologies. It is probable that the observed increasing importance of late-summer temperature for tree-ring growth over the past 50 yr is an effect of the lengthening growing season and of the variations in the climate/tree-ring relationship over time. All the chronologies considered, especially those at the highest altitudes, show an increasing negative influence of June precipitation on tree-ring growth. The climatic signal recorded in tree-ring chronologies from the Italian Central Alps varies over time and is also differentially influenced by climatic parameters according to site elevation.


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