Temperature variability inferred from tree-ring records in Weichang region, China, and its teleconnection with large-scale climate forcing

Based on the combination of two dendrochronologies, the annual mean temperature from May to June for the last 160 years was reconstructed in Weichang region, China, with the predictor variables accounting 43.3% of the variance during the calibration period of 1956–2012. Warm periods with temperature levels great than the mean (17.66 °C) occurred in 1853–1881, 1886–1891, 1904–1909, 1923–1930, 1964–1970, 1980–1988, 1998–2002 and 2007–2011; and cold periods with temperature levels less than the mean occurred in 1882–1885, 1892–1898, 1901–1903, 1910–1922, 1931–1963, 1971–1979, 1989–1997 and 2003–2006. The reconstruction showed that droughts usually occurred in the warm years. And the reconstructed temperature series showed an almost reverse trend to the total precipitation of previous August to present July from Chifeng–Weichang on inter-decadal scale, which indicate the basic feature of climate was warm-dry and cold-wet in Weichang region. The reconstructed temperature series showed a linear increasing trend with a rise 0.11 °C from 1880 to 2012. Comparisons with other temperature series revealed a consistently warming trend after the mid-1950s and confirmed a good repeatability and high reliability in our reconstruction. Spatial correlation implied the reconstruction could represent a regional temperature signal in the large parts of northern China and Central-Eastern Mongolia. The multi-taper method reveals several significant periodicities in our reconstruction over the past 160 years, suggesting possible linkages with the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, lunar gravity, Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and solar activity. Correlation analysis between the reconstruction and Southern Oscillation Index (SOI), lunar geocentric declination, PDO and sunspot number further demonstrates that the temperature variations in Weichang region are negatively correlated with SOI and positively correlated with lunar gravity, PDO and solar activity in the long term.