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Deciphering climate response variation along the Western Ghats of India archived in teak ring width

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Abstract

Latent heat released during orographic precipitation over the Western Ghat (WG) Mountain drives the Indian Summer Monsoon. Instrumental data record a considerable spatiotemporal variation of rainfall amount along the mountain. Although Indian teak (Tectona grandis LF) samples from WG have been used earlier for reconstructing past monsoon rainfall, the effect of rainfall variation on the annual ring growth pattern along the mountain has not been extensively studied yet. To address this issue, tree-ring width data series from three locations—Dahanu (1763 -1985), Nagerhole (1703–2016), and Tekkedy (1785–2003) are presented in this study. The locations are situated along WG from north to south. Monthly mean rainfall data obtained from the nearest observatories show a decreasing (increasing) rainfall amount from north to south during summer monsoon (pre and post-monsoon) . We obtain a significant positive correlation between ring width indices and monsoon rainfall and a negative correlation with summer (especially May) temperature suggesting a contrasting response of summer temperature and monsoon rain on teak growth. The correlation between rainfall and ring width varies from southern to northern WG (both in significance level and the number of months with significant correlation). While the southernmost location exhibits positive (significant) correlations for both pre and summer monsoon months, the correlations are found for only two summer monsoonal months in the northernmost location. This spatial correlation trend reflects the variation of the pre-monsoon to monsoon rainfall ratio observed in our study locations. This observation is further substantiated by soil moisture-ring width relationship. Furthermore, our study shows that ring width indices respond to a variation of western equatorial Pacific sea surface temperature and vapor pressure deficit. Our study, therefore, suggests that the Indian teak samples can be used for understanding regional and seasonal scale rainfall/soil moisture variation along the WG and teleconnection studies.

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Code Availability

The codes for tree ring data analyses are available at the Laboratory of Tree Ring Research website, The University of Arizona: https://ltrr.arizona.edu/research/software. For other plots, open-source software Ferret (https://ferret.pmel.noaa.gov/Ferret/downloads) and a licensed version of Microsoft Office are used.

Data availability

The ring width data are available upon reasonable request to the corresponding author. Observed rainfall and temperature data are available from the India Meteorological Department (IMD), and soil moisture data can be obtained from the website https://esa-soilmoisture-cci.org/.

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Acknowledgements

The Director of IITM, Dr. R. Krishnan, is acknowledged for his constant encouragement. We sincerely acknowledge the forest departments of Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Kerala for their cooperation and help in fieldwork and India Meteorological Department, Pune, for providing the meteorological data. Mr. Omkar Karekar and Ms. Bhgyashree assisted in sample processing and chronology preparation. The Palaeo-Constraints on Monsoon Evolution and Dynamics (PACMEDY) project of Belmont Forum supported the fieldwork in Karnataka. The Indian Space Research Organization-Geosphere Biosphere Program (ISRO-GBP) supported other field trips. We sincerely thank Dr. Christian Bernhofer and two anonymous reviewers for their critical and thoughtful comments and suggestions. 

Funding

The Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune (IITM), is fully funded by the Earth System Science Organization (ESSO) of the Ministry of Earth Sciences, India. The fieldwork in Karnataka work was supported by the Palaeo-Constraints on Monsoon Evolution and Dynamics (PACMEDY) project of Belmont Forum. The Indian Space Research Organization-Geosphere Biosphere Program (ISRO-GBP) (Project no. 9/1(5)/2000 II) supported other field trips. The Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune (IITM) is fully supported by the Earth System Science Organization (ESSO) of the Ministry of Earth Sciences, India.

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  1. Centre for Climate Change Research, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Ministry of Earth Sciences, Pune, 411008, India

    Saikat Sengupta, Hemant Borgaonkar, Amey Datye & Arpan Gajbe

  2. Department of Geology, Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune, 411007, India

    Arpan Gajbe

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  1. Saikat Sengupta
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SS and HB: conceptualization, fieldwork, data analyses, manuscript writing. AD and AG: fieldwork, sample processing, data analysis, and manuscript correction.

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Correspondence to Saikat Sengupta.

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Key message

Teak ring width-rainfall correlations along the Western Ghat Mountain, studied for the first time, show that ring widths respond to the variation of the pre-monsoon: monsoon rainfall ratio along the mountain.

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Sengupta, S., Borgaonkar, H., Datye, A. et al. Deciphering climate response variation along the Western Ghats of India archived in teak ring width. Theor Appl Climatol 154, 847–861 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-023-04590-2

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