Abstract
Quantitative palaeotemperature reconstruction is crucial for understanding the evolution of Earth’s climate and reducing uncertainty in future climate predictions. Clarifying the temperature change over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) during the Common Era is critical because it plays a vital role in the prediction of cryosphere changes in such regions under a future warming climate. In this paper, we report a comprehensive synthesis of currently available quantitative temperature records to refine the temperature history of the TP during the Common Era. To date, Common Era quantitative temperature reconstructions are sparse and mainly concentrated in the northeastern TP. Considering seasonal bias of the available quantitative temperature reconstructions, three different composite temperature records for TP were derived, namely the “Standardization” composite, the “Mean annual air temperature anomaly” composite, and the the “Mean summer temperature anomaly” composite individually. All the integrated temperature series reveal the Medieval Climate Anomaly and the Little Ice Age, but the start and end timings of these multi-centennial-scale periods and their temperature amplitudes differ. There is strong seasonality in temperature variations on this high plateau, and the 20th century warming was characterized by rapid winter temperature increases, while summer temperatures displayed weak variations. Spatial analysis suggests a relatively consistent signal marking a warm Tibetan Plateau during 600-1400 CE and a cold plateau during 1400-1900 CE. Large-scale trends in temperature history for the TP resemble those for China and the Northern Hemisphere. Many factors, such as seasonality of temperature proxies, might lead to uncertainty in the reconstructed series. The results highlight that it is of crucial importance to develop more seasonal temperature reconstructions to improve the reliability of quantitative palaeoclimatic reconstructions based on geological records across the TP.
Highlights
Quantitative temperature reconstructions can help improve the accuracy of climate simulations by providing tests and evaluations of climate models (Snyder, 2010; Braconnot et al, 2012)
We report a comprehensive synthesis of currently available quantitative temperature records to refine the temperature history of the Tibetan Plateau (TP) during the Common Era
The warm period during 0–180 CE reflected by the “MST anomaly” composite series is not shown in the “Standardization” composite series and the “mean annual air temperature (MAAT) anomaly” composite series
Summary
Quantitative temperature reconstructions can help improve the accuracy of climate simulations by providing tests and evaluations of climate models (Snyder, 2010; Braconnot et al, 2012) Such reconstructions can help understand and quantify the influence of external forcings and intrinsic dynamics of the global climate system and reveal natural climate variability in future climate scenarios (Snyder, 2010; Pages 2k Consortium, 2013; Wu et al, 2019). The sensible and latent heat fluxes released over the TP drive intense monsoon circulation and strongly influence global circulation patterns (Thompson et al, 1997) This region has become a hotspot in climate change research because of its sensitive response to and strong effect on global environmental changes (Yao et al, 2012; Hou et al, 2013, 2015). Questions arise regarding the temperature change on the TP during the Common Era, which has important implications for understanding the trends in temperature during the Anthropocene
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