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A multi-proxy reconstruction of spatial and temporal variations in Asian summer temperatures over the last millennium

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Abstract

To investigate climate variability in Asia during the last millennium, the spatial and temporal evolution of summer (June–July–August; JJA) temperature in eastern and south-central Asia is reconstructed using multi-proxy records and the regularized expectation maximization (RegEM) algorithm with truncated total least squares (TTLS), under a point-by-point regression (PPR) framework. The temperature index reconstructions show that the late 20th century was the warmest period in Asia over the past millennium. The temperature field reconstructions illustrate that temperatures in central, eastern, and southern China during the 11th and 13th centuries, and in western Asia during the 12th century, were significantly higher than those in other regions, and comparable to levels in the 20th century. Except for the most recent warming, all identified warm events showed distinct regional expressions and none were uniform over the entire reconstruction area. The main finding of the study is that spatial temperature patterns have, on centennial time-scales, varied greatly over the last millennium. Moreover, seven climate model simulations, from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5), over the same region of Asia, are all consistent with the temperature index reconstruction at the 99 % confidence level. Only spatial temperature patterns extracted as the first empirical orthogonal function (EOF) from the GISS-E2-R and MPI-ESM-P model simulations are significant and consistent with the temperature field reconstruction over the past millennium in Asia at the 90 % confidence level. This indicates that both the reconstruction and the simulations depict the temporal climate variability well over the past millennium. However, the spatial simulation or reconstruction capability of climate variability over the past millennium could be still limited. For reconstruction, some grid points do not pass validation tests and reveal the need for more proxies with high temporal resolution, accurate dating, and sensitive temperature signals, especially in central Asia and before AD 1400.

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Acknowledgments

Version B of the reconstruction is a contribution to the PAGES Asia2k working group. We are indebted to Lucien von Gunten for helpful comments and assistance, and thank Edward R. Cook, Brendan Buckley, Kevin Anchukaitis, Paul J. Krusic, Chun Qin, Xuemei Shao, Jingyun Zheng, Hemant Borgaonkar, Katsuhiko Kimura, Masumi Zaiki, Koh Yasue, Achim Bräuning, Jiangfeng Li, Yujiang Yuan, Hongbing Liu, Yu Liu, Qibing Zhang, Jinbao Li, Jianfeng Peng, Xiaohua Gou, Haifeng Zhu, Shaowu Wang, Deer Zhang, Jonathan Palmer, Paul Sheppard, Margit Schwikowski, Tatyana Papina and other scientists who have contributed their proxy data for the study region to the publicly available database. The study was jointly funded by the CAS Strategic Priority Research Program Grant (XDA05080800; XDB03020500), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41301220). Feng Shi was supported by China Meteorological Administration Drought Research (IAM201213) and West Light Program for Talent Cultivation of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Cenozoic Geology and Environment, Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Feng Shi & Guoqiang Chu

  2. Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Quansheng Ge

  3. Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, China

    Bao Yang & Ninglian Wang

  4. College of Global Change and Earth System Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

    Jianping Li

  5. Joint Center for Global Change Studies, Beijing, China

    Jianping Li

  6. China Meteorological Administration Training Centre, Beijing, China

    Fengmei Yang

  7. Department of History, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist

  8. Bolin Centre for Climate Research, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist

  9. Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

    Olga Solomina

  10. Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russia

    Olga Solomina

  11. Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Kyoto, Japan

    Takeshi Nakatsuka, Chenxi Xu & Masaki Sano

  12. State Key Laboratory of Numerical Modeling for Atmospheric Sciences and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Sen Zhao

  13. Key Laboratory of Humid Subtropical Eco-Geographical Process (Ministry of Education), Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, China

    Keyan Fang

  14. Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Yunnan, China

    Zexin Fan

  15. Faculty of Science, Nepal Academy of Science and Technology, Khumaltar, Lalitpur, Nepal

    Narayan P. Gaire

  16. Central Department of Environmental Science, Tribhuvan University, Kirtipur, Kathmandu, Nepal

    Narayan P. Gaire

  17. Laboratory of Dendrochronology and Plant Ecology, Federal Urdu University, Gulshan-e-Iqbal Campus, Karachi, Pakistan

    Muhammad Usama Zafar

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  1. Feng Shi
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  2. Quansheng Ge
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  10. Sen Zhao
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  17. Muhammad Usama Zafar
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Correspondence to Quansheng Ge.

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Shi, F., Ge, Q., Yang, B. et al. A multi-proxy reconstruction of spatial and temporal variations in Asian summer temperatures over the last millennium. Climatic Change 131, 663–676 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-015-1413-3

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