A 241-Year <i>Cryptomeria fortune</i> Tree-Ring Chronology in Humid Subtropical China and Its Linkages with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation

• Main Authors: Zhipeng Dong, Dai Chen, Jianhua Du, Guang Yang, Maowei Bai, Feifei Zhou, Zhuangpeng Zheng, Chaoyue Ruan, Keyan Fang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-02-01
• Series: Atmosphere
• Subjects: tree ring; climate change; southeast china; pdo; <i>cryptomeria fortunei</i>
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/11/3/247

Humid subtropical China is an &#8220;oasis&#8221; relative to other dry subtropics of the world due to the prevailing of the East Asian summer monsoon (EASM). Although many long climate sensitive tree-rings have been published to understand the historical climate change over various regions in China, long tree-ring chronologies in humid subtropical China are rare due to the difficulty to find old growth trees. This study established a tree-ring chronology spanning from 1776 to 2016 from <i>Cryptomeria fortunei</i> Hooibrenk ex Otto et Dietr in Liancheng area of humid subtropical China, which is also currently the longest chronology in Fujian province. Similar to the climate-growth relationships in neighboring regions, our tree-ring chronology is limited by cold temperature in winter and spring and drought in summer. In addition, a drought stress before the growing season also played a role in limiting the growth of our tree rings. Our climate sensitive tree rings showed different correlations with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) in different periods, possibly via modulation of the EASM.