July–August minimum temperature variability encoded in latewood blue intensity in southeastern China

Abstract

AbstractTree‐ring blue intensity (BI) is well known as a relatively new proxy, which has been utilized for temperature reconstructions over some regions of the worldwide, and has great research potential. In this study, based on tree‐ring data from Pinus massoniana in northwestern Wuyi Mountains in southeastern China, we established a series of tree‐ring width (TRW), earlywood BI (EWBI), latewood BI (LWBI) and delta BI (ΔBI) chronologies. The correlation analysis results indicated that BI chronologies are better than TRW chronology in relation to climate factors; EWBI chronology is a positive correlation with three temperatures (Tmean, Tmax and Tmin), whereas ΔBI and LWBI chronologies almost are negative correlations with temperatures. The LWBI chronology exhibited the highest correlation in July–August Tmin during 1955–2021 (r = −0.61, p < 0.01) and for the reconstruction. The reconstruction model could explain 36.64% of the observed variance. The reconstructed series spanned from 1843 to 2021 and documented three warm periods (1843–1863, 1874–1888 and 1992–2021) and one cold period (1911–1991), and Tmin rapidly warming since 1950s, which is similar to variation in the surrounding temperature reconstruction and is also consistent with the rate of global warming published by the IPCC. The result shows that the summer Tmin anomaly in southeast China is related significantly to the quasi‐biennial oscillation in the western Pacific and Indian Ocean.