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Interannual to centennial variability of the South Asian summer monsoon over the past millennium

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Abstract

Proxy-based reconstructions have indicated that the South Asian summer monsoon (SASM) has shown interannual- to centennial-scale oscillations over the past millennium; however, the variability and mechanisms that operate over different timescales remain to be explicitly identified. This is firstly because of the inadequate spatial representation within previous SASM reconstructions, which is caused by the scarcity of tree-ring records from the core monsoon region. This study used eight additional Indian tree-ring width chronologies from the core region of the SASM to update the reconstructed SASM index that covers the past 1105 years. We found that the most significant interannual variability of SASM is mainly related to the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) over the past few hundred years. The decadal/multidecadal oscillations show a high negative/positive correlation with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)/Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) after the late 19th century. The centennial component of the SASM, which accounts for 19.4% of the total variance, begins to weaken from the mid-13th century and reaches a minimum in the mid-15th century. The component gradually strengthens again to reach its peak in the early 17th century, followed by a decline trend toward recent. The centennial variations agree well with historical changes in solar activity before the nineteenth century that caused changes in land–sea thermal contrast. However, the close linkage between the SASM and solar activity has weakened since the Industrial era, probably because of the enhanced influence of anthropogenic aerosol emissions.

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Acknowledgements

This work was jointly funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China (Grant No. 2016YFA0600504), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants No. 41505081, No. 41690114, and No. 41430531), and the Chinese Academy of Sciences Pioneer Hundred Talents Program. Feng Shi was supported by the “MOVE-IN Louvain” Incoming Post-doctoral Fellowship, co-funded by the Marie Curie actions of the European Commission. Thanks are extended to Prof. Bao Yang, Prof. Xuemei Shao, Prof. Yujiang Yuan, Dr. Sano Masaki, Mr. Somaru Ram, Mr. Shri A.B. Sikder and other paleoclimatic scientists who published the various tree-ring chronologies used in this study.

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  1. Key Laboratory of Cenozoic Geology and Environment, Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China

    Feng Shi, Keyan Fang, Chenxi Xu & Zhengtang Guo

  2. Key Laboratory of Humid Subtropical Eco-geographical Process (Ministry of Education), College of Geographical Sciences, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, 350007, China

    Keyan Fang

  3. CAS Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Zhengtang Guo

  4. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Zhengtang Guo

  5. Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, 411008, India

    H. P. Borgaonkar

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Shi, F., Fang, K., Xu, C. et al. Interannual to centennial variability of the South Asian summer monsoon over the past millennium. Clim Dyn 49, 2803–2814 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-016-3493-9

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