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Spatiotemporal drought variability of the eastern Tibetan Plateau during the last millennium

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Abstract

Tibetan Plateau is the headwater region of many major Asian rivers and very susceptive to climate change. Therefore, knowledge about climate and its spatiotemporal variability in this area is very important for ecological conservation, water resource management and social development. The aim of this study was to reconstruct and analyze the hydroclimate variation on eastern Tibetan Plateau (ETP) over many centuries and explore possible forcing factors on regional hydroclimate variability. We used 118 tree-ring chronologies from ETP to reconstruct the gridded May–July Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index for the ETP over the last millennium. The reconstruction was developed using an ensemble point-by-point reconstruction method, and a searching region method was used to locate the candidate tree-ring chronologies. The reconstructions have nicely captured the spatial and temporal features of the regional drought variation. The drought variations in south and north of 32.5°N are notably different, which may be related to the divergence influence of North Atlantic Oscillation on the climate systems in the south and north, as well as differences in local climate. Spectral analysis and series comparison suggest that the drought variation in the northeastern Tibetan Plateau has been possibly influenced by solar activity on centurial and longer time scale.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all who have contributed data to this study, the two anonymous referees for their valuable comments and suggestions, and Fan Yang at New York University for her kind help in editing the English writing. This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 41475067 and 41401047), Changjiang Scholars Program, and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. lzujbky-2016-163).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Western China’s Environmental Systems (Ministry of Education), School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Yang Deng, Xiaohua Gou, Linlin Gao & Fen Zhang

  2. State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Sciences, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Meixue Yang

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  1. Yang Deng
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  2. Xiaohua Gou
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Correspondence to Xiaohua Gou.

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Deng, Y., Gou, X., Gao, L. et al. Spatiotemporal drought variability of the eastern Tibetan Plateau during the last millennium. Clim Dyn 49, 2077–2091 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-016-3433-8

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