Abstract
Drought occurrence and duration in central Asia are of important socioeconomic, ecological, and geophysical significance and have received increasing research attention in recent years. Understanding long-term drought trends and their driving forces require reliable records of past drought variability with broad spatial representativeness. Here, we compiled four tree-ring δ18O records from eastern central Asia (ECA) and composited them into a drought-sensitive proxy to explore regional ECA moisture variations over the past 301 years (1710–2010 CE). A robust regional standardized precipitation-evapotranspiration index (SPEI) reconstruction was established based on the tree-ring cellulose δ18O fractionation mechanism and statistically significant proxy-climate relationships. We identified prominent droughts in 1710–1770, 1810–1830, and the beginning of the twenty-first century, and a regime shift to a persistently wet period from the 1880s to 2000. Our reconstruction reveals the impact of drought and pluvial patterns on the decline of Zhungar Empire, and on historical agricultural and socio-economical activities, including increased migration into ECA during the 1770–1800 pluvial. Our findings also suggest that wet conditions in the twentieth century in ECA were related to a strengthening of the westerly circulation and thus shed light on large-scale atmospheric circulation dynamics in central Asia.
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41501049, 41571196 & 41421061), the Self-determination Project of the State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Sciences (SKLCS-ZZ-2017), the foundation of Light of West China Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the fundamental Research funds for the Central Universities (Projects No: GK201801007), the China Desert Meteorological Science Research Foundation (Sqj2014002), the open foundation of the State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, CAS (SKLLQG1424), and by the Youth Innovation Promotion Association, CAS. VT was supported by the National Science Foundation (CAREER Award AGS-1349942). We are grateful for useful discussion from Dr. Xiuqi Fang, Dr. Li Zhang, and Yikai Li. We greatly appreciated suggestions from anonymous referees and editor staff for the improvement of our manuscript.
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Xu, G., Liu, X., Trouet, V. et al. Regional drought shifts (1710–2010) in East Central Asia and linkages with atmospheric circulation recorded in tree-ring δ18O. Clim Dyn 52, 713–727 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-018-4215-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-018-4215-2