title: A Picea crassifolia Tree-Ring Width-Based Temperature Reconstruction for the Mt. Dongda Region, Northwest China, and Its Relationship to Large-Scale Climate Forcing.
abstract: The historical May-October mean temperature since 1831 was reconstructed based on tree-ring width of Qinghai spruce (Picea crassifolia Kom.) collected on Mt. Dongda, North of the Hexi Corridor in Northwest China. The regression model explained 46.6% of the variance of the instrumentally observed temperature. The cold periods in the reconstruction were 1831-1889, 1894-1901, 1908-1934 and 1950-1952, and the warm periods were 1890-1893, 1902-1907, 1935-1949 and 1953-2011. During the instrumental period (1951-2011), an obvious warming trend appeared in the last twenty years. The reconstruction displayed similar patterns to a temperature reconstruction from the east-central Tibetan Plateau at the inter-decadal timescale, indicating that the temperature reconstruction in this study was a reliable proxy for Northwest China. It was also found that the reconstruction series had good consistency with the Northern Hemisphere temperature at a decadal timescale. Multi-taper method spectral analysis detected some low- and high-frequency cycles (2.3-2.4-year, 2.8-year, 3.4-3.6-year, 5.0-year, 9.9-year and 27.0-year). Combining these cycles, the relationship of the low-frequency change with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and Southern Oscillation (SO) suggested that the reconstructed temperature variations may be related to large-scale atmospheric-oceanic variations. Major volcanic eruptions were partly reflected in the reconstructed temperatures after high-pass filtering; these events promoted anomalous cooling in this region. The results of this study not only provide new information for assessing the long-term temperature changes in the Hexi Corridor of Northwest China, but also further demonstrate the effects of large-scale atmospheric-oceanic circulation on climate change in Northwest China.
authors: Department of Earth and Environmental Science, School of Human Settlements and Civil Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, 710049, China.|The State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi'an, 710061, China.|Joint Center for Global Change Studies (JCGCS), Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China.
authors: Yu
authors: Y
authors: Liu
authors: Department of Earth and Environmental Science, School of Human Settlements and Civil Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, 710049, China.|The State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi'an, 710061, China.
authors: Changfeng
authors: C
authors: Sun
authors: The State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi'an, 710061, China.|Joint Center for Global Change Studies (JCGCS), Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China.
authors: Qiang
authors: Q
authors: Li
authors: The State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi'an, 710061, China.
authors: Qiufang
authors: Q
authors: Cai
mesh_terms: D002681:China; D002980:Climate; D057231:Climate Change; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D028222:Picea / Q000254:growth & development*; D012621:Seasons; D013696:Temperature; D014197:Trees / Q000254:growth & development; D018707:Volcanic Eruptions; D014934:Wood