Climate sensitivity of Mediterranean pine growth reveals distinct east-west dipole

The European Mediterranean region is governed by a characteristic climate of summer drought that is likely to increase in duration and intensity under predicted climate change. However, large-scale network analyses investigating spatial aspects of pre-instrumental drought variability for this biogeo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International Journal of Climatology
Main Authors: Seim, A., Treydte, K., Trouet, V., Frank, D., Fonti, P., Tegel, W., Panayotov, M., Fernandez-Donado, L., Krusic, P., Büntgen, U. (Ulf)
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: 2015
Subjects:
tree-ring width
scots pine
wood formation
ice core
variability
drought
precipitation
reconstructions
circulation
dynamics
climate dynamics
dendroclimatology
drought response
Mediterranean east-west dipole
palaeoclimatology
Pinus spp
principal component analysis
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.4137
http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0270478
Description
Summary:The European Mediterranean region is governed by a characteristic climate of summer drought that is likely to increase in duration and intensity under predicted climate change. However, large-scale network analyses investigating spatial aspects of pre-instrumental drought variability for this biogeographic zone are still scarce. In this study we introduce 54 mid- to high-elevation tree-ring width (TRW) chronologies comprising 2186 individual series from pine trees (Pinus spp.). This compilation spans a 4000-km east-west transect from Spain to Turkey, and was subjected to quality control and standardization prior to the development of site chronologies. A principal component analysis (PCA) was applied to identify spatial growth patterns during the network's common period 1862-1976, and new composite TRW chronologies were developed and investigated. The PCA reveals a common variance of 19.7% over the 54 Mediterranean pine chronologies. More interestingly, a dipole pattern in growth variability is found between the western (15% explained variance) and eastern (9.6%) sites, persisting back to 1330 AD. Pine growth on the Iberian Peninsula and Italy favours warm early growing seasons, but summer drought is most critical for ring width formation in the eastern Mediterranean region. Synoptic climate dynamics that have been in operation for the last seven centuries have been identified as the driving mechanism of a distinct east-west dipole in the growth variability of Mediterranean pines.

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