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Recent warming evidence inferred from a tree-ring-based winter-half year minimum temperature reconstruction in northwestern Yichang, South Central China, and its relation to the large-scale circulation anomalies

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Abstract

High-resolution winter temperature reconstructions in China are rare, yet vital for the comprehensive understanding of past climate change. In the present work, the first winter-half year minimum mean temperature from previous November to current April in northwestern Yichang, South Central China, was reconstructed back to 1875 based on tree-ring material. The reconstruction can explain 55 % of the variance over the calibration period during 1955–2011. The temperature maintained at comparatively low level before 1958, and an abnormal warming was seen since 1959. However, the warming trend stagnated after 2000 AD. 2001–2010 was the warmest decade not only during the instrumental period but also during the whole reconstructed period. The reconstruction indicates good spatial resemblance to other temperatures series in adjacent areas and Northern Hemisphere, yet the recent warming in this study is earlier and more prominent than that of Southeast China. This work also manifests that the winter-half year minimum temperature in study area has good agreement with summer (June–September) maximum temperature variation in Southeast China at decadal scale, except that the winter-half year warming in recent decades is more evident than summer. This reconstruction is not only useful in improving our knowledge of long-term temperature variation but also useful in predicting the tree growth dynamics in the future in the study area.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Yiling District Forestry Bureau of Yichang City for the assistance in the field work. This work was jointly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41171170), CAS “Light of west China” program, the National Basic Research Program of China (2013CB955903), and the State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary foundation (SKLLQG).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi’an, 710075, China

    Qiufang Cai, Yu Liu, Yongyong Ma & Han Liu

  2. Department of Environmental Science and Technology, School of Human Settlements and Civil Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710049, China

    Yu Liu

  3. Department of Geography, Xingtai University, Xingtai, 054001, China

    Yanchao Wang

  4. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Yongyong Ma & Han Liu

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  1. Qiufang Cai
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  2. Yu Liu
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Correspondence to Qiufang Cai or Yu Liu.

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Cai, Q., Liu, Y., Wang, Y. et al. Recent warming evidence inferred from a tree-ring-based winter-half year minimum temperature reconstruction in northwestern Yichang, South Central China, and its relation to the large-scale circulation anomalies. Int J Biometeorol 60, 1885–1896 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-016-1175-2

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