Abstract
Abstract. Phenological records in historical documents have been proven to be of unique value for reconstructing past climate changes. As a literary genre, poetry reached its peak in the Tang and Song dynasties (618–1279 CE) in China. Sources from this period could provide abundant phenological records in the absence of phenological observations. However, the reliability of phenological records from poems, as well as their processing methods, remains to be comprehensively summarized and discussed. In this paper, after introducing the certainties and uncertainties of phenological information in poems, the key processing steps and methods for deriving phenological records from poems and using them in past climate change studies are discussed: (1) two principles, namely the principle of conservatism and the principle of personal experience, should be followed to reduce uncertainties; (2) the phenological records in poems need to be filtered according to the types of poems, background information, rhetorical devices, spatial representations, and human influence; (3) animals and plants are identified at the species level according to their modern distributions and the sequences of different phenophases; (4) phenophases in poems are identified on the basis of modern observation criteria; (5) the dates and sites for the phenophases in poems are confirmed from background information and related studies. As a case study, 86 phenological records from poems of the Tang Dynasty in the Guanzhong region in China were extracted to reconstruct annual temperature anomalies in specific years in the period between 600 and 900 CE. Following this, the reconstruction from poems was compared with relevant reconstructions in published studies to demonstrate the validity and reliability of phenological records from poems in studies of past climate changes. This paper reveals that the phenological records from poems could be useful evidence of past climate changes after being scientifically processed. This could provide an important reference for future studies in this domain, in both principle and methodology, pursuant of extracting and applying phenological records from poems for larger areas and different periods in Chinese history.
Highlights
Phenology is the study of recurring biological life cycle stages and the seasonality of non-biological events triggered by environmental changes (Schwartz, 2003; Richardson et al, 2013)
The first series used for comparison is attributable to Liu et al (2016), wherein winter half-year temperature anomalies were reconstructed by 87 phenological records from historical documents for the period 600–902 CE in the Guanzhong region
The reconstruction by Liu et al (2016) is a reliable reference because of the study area and period considered coincide and because the proxies used by that study and ours are phenological records from independent sources
Summary
Phenology is the study of recurring biological life cycle stages and the seasonality of non-biological events triggered by environmental changes (Schwartz, 2003; Richardson et al, 2013). Phenological data derived from historical documents have been widely used as proxies to reflect past climatic changes around the world, especially in Europe and Asia. Y. Liu et al.: Phenological records from Chinese poems are reliable evidence for past climate changes construct past climate changes in Europe. In Japan, cherry blossom records have been used to reconstruct spring temperatures dating back to the medieval period (800–1400 CE) (Aono and Kazui, 2008; Aono and Saito, 2010; Aono, 2015)
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