A Picea crassifolia Tree-Ring Width-Based Temperature Reconstruction for the Mt. Dongda Region, Northwest China, and Its Relationship to Large-Scale Climate Forcing

The historical May–October mean temperature since 1831 was reconstructed based on tree-ring width of Qinghai spruce (Picea crassifolia Kom.) collected on Mt. Dongda, North of the Hexi Corridor in Northwest China. The regression model explained 46.6% of the variance of the instrumentally observed temperature. The cold periods in the reconstruction were 1831–1889, 1894–1901, 1908–1934 and 1950–1952, and the warm periods were 1890–1893, 1902–1907, 1935–1949 and 1953–2011. During the instrumental period (1951–2011), an obvious warming trend appeared in the last twenty years. The reconstruction displayed similar patterns to a temperature reconstruction from the east-central Tibetan Plateau at the inter-decadal timescale, indicating that the temperature reconstruction in this study was a reliable proxy for Northwest China. It was also found that the reconstruction series had good consistency with the Northern Hemisphere temperature at a decadal timescale. Multi-taper method spectral analysis detected some low- and high-frequency cycles (2.3–2.4-year, 2.8-year, 3.4–3.6-year, 5.0-year, 9.9-year and 27.0-year). Combining these cycles, the relationship of the low-frequency change with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and Southern Oscillation (SO) suggested that the reconstructed temperature variations may be related to large-scale atmospheric-oceanic variations. Major volcanic eruptions were partly reflected in the reconstructed temperatures after high-pass filtering; these events promoted anomalous cooling in this region. The results of this study not only provide new information for assessing the long-term temperature changes in the Hexi Corridor of Northwest China, but also further demonstrate the effects of large-scale atmospheric-oceanic circulation on climate change in Northwest China.