Air mass origin signals in δ18O of tree-ring cellulose revealed by back-trajectory modeling at the monsoonal Tibetan plateau

• Published in: International journal of biometeorology Vol. 61; no. 6; pp. 1109 - 1124
• Main Authors: Wernicke, Jakob, Hochreuther, Philipp, Grießinger, Jussi, Zhu, Haifeng, Wang, Lily, Bräuning, Achim
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2017
• Subjects: Animal Physiology; Biological and Medical Physics; Biophysics; Earth and Environmental Science; Environment; Environmental Health; Meteorology; Original Paper; Plant Physiology; Asian summer monsoon; Backward trajectory; Tree-ring; Tibetan plateau; O
• ISSN: 0020-7128; 1432-1254
• DOI: 10.1007/s00484-016-1292-y

A profound consideration of stable oxygen isotope source water origins is a precondition for an unambiguous palaeoenvironmental interpretation of terrestrial δ 18 O archives. To stress the influence of air mass origins on widely used δ 18 O tree-ring chronologies, we conducted correlation analyses between six annually resolved δ 18 O tree-ring cellulose ( δ 18 O TC ) chronologies and mean annual air package origins obtained from backward trajectory modeling. This novel approach has been tested for a transect at the southeastern Tibetan plateau (TP), where air masses with different isotopic composition overlap. Detailed examinations of daily precipitation amounts and monthly precipitation δ 18 O values ( δ 18 O P ) were conducted with the ERA Interim and Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique General Circulation Model (LMDZiso) data, respectively. Particularly the southernmost study sites are influenced by a distinct amount effect. Here, air package origin δ 18 O TC relations are generally weaker in contrast to our northern located study sites. We found that tree-ring isotope signatures at dry sites with less rain days per year tend to be influenced stronger by air mass origin than tree-ring isotope values at semi-humid sites. That implies that the local hydroclimate history inferred from δ 18 O TC archives is better recorded at semi-humid sites.