A Gridded Reconstruction of Warm Season Precipitation for Asia Spanning the Past Half Millennium

• Published in: Journal of climate Vol. 26; no. 7; pp. 2192 - 2204
• Main Authors: Feng, Song, Hu, Qi, Wu, Qianru, Mann, Michael E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Boston, MA American Meteorological Society 01.04.2013
• Subjects: Arid regions; Arid zones; Asian; Calibration; China; Climate; Climate change; Climate proxies; Computer centers; Continents; Datasets; Dendroclimatology; Drought; Earth, ocean, space; Exact sciences and technology; External geophysics; Geophysics. Techniques, methods, instrumentation and models; Growth rings; Humid climates; Ice cores; Maximization; Meteorology; Monsoons; Paleoclimatology; Precipitation; Proxy reporting; Proxy statements; Reconstruction; Records; Semiarid zones; Skills; Studies; Summer; Summer monsoon; Tree rings; Trends; Warm seasons; Water in the atmosphere (humidity, clouds, evaporation, precipitation); Asia; South Korea; India; South America; Europe; China; Historical reconstruction; Proxy; Expectation-maximization algorithm; atmospheric precipitation; Century 19th; Century 17th; Century 18th; Long term variation; Century 16th
• ISSN: 0894-8755; 1520-0442
• DOI: 10.1175/jcli-d-12-00099.1

The authors reconstructed May–September precipitation over the Asian continent (5°–55°N, 60°–135°E) back to AD 1470 on the basis of tree-ring data, historical documentary records, ice core records, and the few long-term instrumental data series available in the region. They employed the method of Regularized Expectation Maximization (RegEM) and applied it to 44 subregions within the continent. Verification exercises demonstrate that the reconstruction is skillful over most of the study domain, with eastern China, India, and other regions of humid climate displaying the greatest skill. Lower reconstruction skill is observed in semiarid and arid regions, which was attributable at least in part to the scarcity of observations available for calibration/validation. The precipitation reconstructions agree well with previous reconstructions, where they are available. The explanatory value of the reconstruction is illustrated using five historically documented severe droughts in north-central China during the past half millennium. The reconstructions both validate and provide a larger-scale context for understanding these past climate events and their relationship with the Asian summer monsoons.