Abstract
AbstractDroughts are recurring phenomena in the north‐western Himalaya causing severe socioeconomic hardships. Our understanding on temporal and spatial occurrence of such extreme droughts in long‐term perspective is constrained due to limited short‐term weather records. Toward fulfilling such a large data void, we developed a network of ring‐width chronologies of Himalayan cedar from seven moisture stressed high‐elevation sites in Kishtwar, Jammu & Kashmir. Moisture responsive ring‐width chronologies were used to develop the annual Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI from previous year June to current year May (SPI12‐May)) extending back to 1613 CE. The SPI reconstruction revealed annual to decadal‐scale variability in droughts, which strikingly were more frequent and of larger magnitude during 1760s–2017 CE in comparison to the earlier part of the reconstruction (1613–1750s CE). Our SPI12‐May record revealed strong consistency with other tree‐ring‐based hydrological records from the western Himalaya. Spatial correlation analyses revealed strong linkage of the SPI with Tropical Pacific Ocean surface temperature.
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