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Recent weakening of seasonal temperature difference in East Asia beyond the historical range of variability since the 14th century

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Abstract

Seasonal differences of temperature are crucial components of the Earth’s climate system. However, the relatively short observational record, especially for East Asia, has limited progress in understanding seasonal differences. In this study, we identify ten tree-ring chronologies separately correlated with local winter (December–February) temperatures and twelve different tree-ring chronologies separately correlated with summer (June–August) temperatures across East Asia. Using these discrete seasonal tree-ring chronologies, we develop two independent winter and summer temperature reconstructions covering the period 1376–1995 CE for East Asia, and compare them with model simulations. Our reconstructions show a more significant volcanic cooling and earlier onset of modern warming in summer than in winter. The reconstructed summer-minus-winter temperature decreased since as early as the late 19th century, which has driven the current state of seasonal temperature difference to out of the natural variability since the 1370s. Climate models could generally reproduce the variability and trends in seasonal reconstructions, but might largely underestimate seasonal differences due to the fact that seasonal expressions on external forcing and modes of internal variability are too small. Our study highlights the importance of using proxy-based seasonal reconstructions to evaluate the performance of climate models, and implies a substantial weakening of seasonal temperature differences in the future.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the PAGES2k network members and many others for making their tree-ring data publicly available. The new seasonal temperature reconstructions are publically available on the National Centers for Environmental Information at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/paleosearch/study/37057). This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41888101, 41602192, and 41901095) and the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2017YFA0603302). Jianglin WANG acknowledges the support by the Youth Innovation Promotion Association Foundation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. 2018471). Fredrik Charpentier LJUNGQVIST was supported by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet, Grant No. 2018-01272), and he conducted the work with this article as a Pro Futura Scientia XIII Fellow funded by the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study through Riksbankens Jubileumsfond.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Ecological Safety and Sustainable Development in Arid Lands, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Jianglin Wang

  2. Key Laboratory of Desert and Desertification, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Jianglin Wang

  3. School of Geography and Ocean Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210023, China

    Bao Yang

  4. College of Geography and Environmental Science, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, 321004, China

    Zhiyuan Wang

  5. Science and Innovation Department, World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Geneva, 1211, Switzerland

    Jürg Luterbacher

  6. Department of History, Stockholm University, Stockholm, 10691, Sweden

    Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist

  7. Bolin Centre for Climate Research, Stockholm University, Stockholm, 10691, Sweden

    Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist

  8. Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Linneanum, Thunbergsvägen 2, Uppsala, 75238, Sweden

    Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist

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  4. Jürg Luterbacher
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  5. Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist
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Correspondence to Jianglin Wang or Bao Yang.

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Wang, J., Yang, B., Wang, Z. et al. Recent weakening of seasonal temperature difference in East Asia beyond the historical range of variability since the 14th century. Sci. China Earth Sci. 66, 1133–1146 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-022-1066-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-022-1066-5

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