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A 258-year reconstruction of precipitation for southern Northeast China and the northern Korean peninsula

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Abstract

We present a well-verified precipitation reconstruction (r = 0.612, p < 0.01), spanning 1741 to 1998, for a relatively humid monsoon region from southern Northeast China and the northern Korean peninsula, based on tree rings from Chinese pine and Korean pine. We then investigate the variability of the reconstruction, and identify the leading rainfall patterns and regional dryness and wetness modes during the latest 2.5 centuries. This reconstruction shows that three persistent dry decades occurred during the 1840s, 1910s and 1850s and the three wettest decades occurred during the 1770s, 1820s and 1930s. The five years with lowest rainfall were 1759, 1917, 1841, 1747 and 1839, and 1770, 1938, 1819, 1941 and 1822 were the five years with highest rainfall, respectively. As indicated by the spatial correlation patterns, the reconstruction also exhibits regional characteristics. The variation of reconstructed rainfall significantly corresponds to East Asian monsoon.

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Acknowledgments

This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China Project 41271066, 31570632, 41571094 and 41601045, and the US National Science Foundation Project AGS-PRF: #1137729. Dr. Steve W. Leavitt helped to improve this work. We thank contributors of Korean tree-ring data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tree-Ring Laboratory, Forestry College/ Research Station of Liaohe-River Plain Forest Ecosystem CFERN, Shenyang Agricultural University, Shenyang, China

    Zhenju Chen & Xianliang Zhang

  2. Qingyuan Forest CERN, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, China

    Zhenju Chen & Xingyuan He

  3. Tree-Ring Laboratory, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Nicole K. Davi

  4. Department of Environmental Science, William Paterson University, Wayne, NJ, USA

    Nicole K. Davi

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  1. Zhenju Chen
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  2. Xingyuan He
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  3. Nicole K. Davi
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  4. Xianliang Zhang
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Correspondence to Zhenju Chen.

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Chen, Z., He, X., Davi, N.K. et al. A 258-year reconstruction of precipitation for southern Northeast China and the northern Korean peninsula. Climatic Change 139, 609–622 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-016-1796-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-016-1796-9

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