Streamflow variability in the past four centuries for the largest tributary of the Yellow River and its teleconnection with large‐scale climate forcing

Abstract

AbstractUnderstanding long‐term hydroclimate change and its evolution mechanism is beneficial to hydrological assessments and future planning in the Weihe River Basin, a region affected by the East Asian monsoon, as well as addressing increasing concerns about water resources due to social and economic development. The average June–July streamflow reconstruction was performed for the period from 1592 to 1988 for the Weihe River, based on the common growth responses relating tree‐ring width, minimum density and hydrological variables, as inferred from the first principal component series of tree‐ring width and density. The statistical results of calibration and verification confirmed that our model was credible and could explain 47.2% of the variance in the calibration period from 1937 to 1970. According to the criteria of one standard deviation less or greater than the mean value, 59 extremely low flow years and 62 high flow years were identified, accounting for 14.86% and 15.62%, respectively, of the past 397‐year hydrological reconstruction. Severe dryness and wetness periods were in good agreement with other hydrological records in the basin, suggesting the coherence of hydroclimate changes at the basin scale, including extreme drought events from the 1920s to 1930s. The reconstructed streamflow had significant interannual and interdecadal periodic signals associated with spatial correlations with sea surface temperatures in the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Oceans, indicating the relationships between hydrological variations in the Weihe River and the natural forcing related to the El Niño‐Southern Oscillation, Pacific Decadal Oscillation, Indian Ocean Dipole pattern, North Atlantic Oscillation and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). Our results provide new evidence for the potential of hydrological research using multiple tree‐ring indicators, such as tree‐ring width and minimum density, in the semiarid and semihumid areas of central China.