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Monsoon precipitation variations in Myanmar since AD 1770: linkage to tropical ocean‐atmospheric circulations

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Abstract

To understand inter-annual to decadal summer monsoon precipitation variations in Myanmar, we developed new tree-ring chronologies of Tectona grandis (teak) from three sampling sites in north-central Myanmar where the climatic proxy is sparse. A regional chronology (spanning 1700–2016) derived from three site chronologies showed a strongly positive precipitation sensitivity during the summer monsoon (R = 0.71), indicating that slow tree growth was detected in years of deficient precipitation. We reconstructed monsoon precipitation (May–October) for the period 1770–2016, with robust calibration-verification statistics. Our reconstruction revealed 22 (16) extremely dry (wet) years over the past 247 years. Several dry and wet episodes recorded in our reconstruction are consistent with other precipitation proxies from tropical Asia, such as the East Indian drought in 1790–1796 and the Victorian Holocaust drought in 1888–1890. The 2.0–4.0-year high-frequency periodicities revealed from spectral peaks and dominant regions of high spatial correlations indicated the summer precipitation in Myanmar is linked with broader-scale ocean-atmospheric circulations, mainly associated with the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) activities due to sea surface temperature variations in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Coherent relationships of our reconstructed series with ENSO-related climate indices further support the dynamics of monsoon precipitation variability in Myanmar is inter-linked with global climate systems. Our reconstruction inferred from teak tree rings may be useful to provide valuable insight into the impacts of extreme weather events associated with monsoon hydroclimate in Myanmar.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the Forest Department of Myanmar for permitting us teak tree-ring sampling. We appreciate Brendan M. Buckley, Chenxi Xu, and Rosanne D’Arrigo for contributing their tree-ring data. This research was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC, 31861133007, 31770533), the National Key Research Development Program of China (2016YFC0502105), the Southeast Asia Biodiversity Research Institute Chinese Academy of Sciences (Y4ZK111B01), and the CAS 135 program (2017XTBG-T01). ZZ was supported by the CAS-TWAS President’s Ph.D. Fellowship Programme (2016CTF157) for his doctoral study. We also thank three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions to improve the quality of the manuscript. We all have no conflicts of interest regarding this publication.

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Correspondence to Ze-Xin Fan.

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Zaw, Z., Fan, ZX., Bräuning, A. et al. Monsoon precipitation variations in Myanmar since AD 1770: linkage to tropical ocean‐atmospheric circulations. Clim Dyn 56, 3337–3352 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-021-05645-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-021-05645-8

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