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Millennium tree-ring reconstruction of drought variability in the eastern Qilian Mountains, northwest China

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Abstract

Knowledge of natural long-term drought variability is essential for water resource management and planning, especially in arid and sub-arid regions of the world. In the eastern Qilian Mountains of China, long-term drought variability based on high-resolution proxy records such as tree-ring data are still scarce to date. Here we present a new tree-ring chronology from the eastern Qilian Mountains which provides a valuable 1,002-year record (1009–2010 CE) of drought variability. The new reconstruction of June–July 5-month scale standardized precipitation and evapotranspiration index is the first millennium tree-ring estimate of past climate developed in the eastern Qilian Mountains. The record shows that this region has experienced several persistent droughts and pluvials over the past millennium, with significantly drier climate during the fifteenth century and dramatic wetting since the nineteenth century. The low frequency generally agrees with other nearby studies based on both tree-ring data and other proxy data.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are very grateful to the two anonymous referees for their valuable comments and suggestions to improve the manuscript. This research is supported by the National Science Foundation of China (No. 41475067, No. 41171039 and No. 41401047). Yang Deng and Linlin Gao are also funded by the China Scholarship Council.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. MOE Key Laboratory of Western China’s Environmental Systems, Collaborative Innovation Centre for Arid Environments and Climate Change, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Xiaohua Gou, Yang Deng, Linlin Gao, Fahu Chen & Fen Zhang

  2. Tree-Ring Laboratory, Lanont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, NY, 10964, USA

    Xiaohua Gou & Edward Cook

  3. State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Sciences, Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Meixue Yang

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  1. Xiaohua Gou
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  2. Yang Deng
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  3. Linlin Gao
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  4. Fahu Chen
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  5. Edward Cook
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  6. Meixue Yang
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  7. Fen Zhang
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Correspondence to Xiaohua Gou.

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Gou, X., Deng, Y., Gao, L. et al. Millennium tree-ring reconstruction of drought variability in the eastern Qilian Mountains, northwest China. Clim Dyn 45, 1761–1770 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-014-2431-y

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