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Sensitive climate response of tree-ring δ18O to current warming in the Qinling Mountains along a climate boundary in China

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Abstract

In the context of global warming, the “divergence problem” phenomenon in the climate response of tree growth has been observed. Here, we use tree-ring stable oxygen isotopes (δ18O) to examine the response under current warming in Tsuga chinensis Pritz. and Pinus tabulaeformis Carr. growing on the south slope (SS) and north slope (NS) of the Qinling Mountains, a boundary between subtropical and warm temperate zones in China. Both δ18O series are significantly correlated with several hydroclimate reconstructions in the surrounding area since 1750, suggesting that tree-ring δ18O could capture large-scale characteristics of climate change in the Qinling Mountains. However, a difference arises in the two δ18O series since the early 1980s. At the SS site, the increasing δ18O is closely related to the increased warming (0.30℃/year) from 1981. This result mainly because temperature is the most significant climate factor (r = 0.465, n = 51, p < 0.001) in determining tree-ring δ18O by affecting the δ18O of soil water before and after the increased warming at the SS site. Although the warming trend is also significant (0.31℃/year) at the NS site since 1981, the δ18O variation shows no obvious fluctuation, which may indicate that relative humidity is the dominant controlling factor (r=-0.603, n = 48, p < 0.001) but not temperature for the δ18O of Pinus tabulaeformis. The results imply that tree-ring δ18O is still sensitive to its dominant climatic controlling factor under the current warming, suggesting that it has the potential to infer past climate change by using tree-ring δ18O in a future warming scenario.

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Acknowledgements

This study was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32061123008, 42071026, 41888101, 41873021 and 42173080), grant from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB40000000) and the STEP program (Grant No. 2019QZKK0101). This work is a contribution of The Belt and Road Center of Environmental Studies, the Institute of Earth and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Global Environmental Change, **’an Jiaotong University, 710049, **’an, China

    Qiang Li, Yu Liu, Huiming Song, Ruoshi Liu, Changfeng Sun & Hai Cheng

  2. State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 710061, **’an, China

    Qiang Li, Yu Liu, Huiming Song, Qiufang Cai, Changfeng Sun, Congxi Fang & Hai Cheng

  3. China-Pakistan Joint Research Center on Earth Sciences, CAS-HEC, 45320, Islamabad, Pakistan

    Qiang Li, Yu Liu, Huiming Song, Qiufang Cai, Changfeng Sun & Congxi Fang

  4. CAS Center for Excellence in Quaternary Science and Global Change, 710061, **’an, China

    Qiang Li, Yu Liu, Huiming Song, Qiufang Cai, Changfeng Sun & Congxi Fang

  5. Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Hai Cheng

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  1. Qiang Li
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Li, Q., Liu, Y., Song, H. et al. Sensitive climate response of tree-ring δ18O to current warming in the Qinling Mountains along a climate boundary in China. Clim Dyn 60, 2597–2612 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-022-06460-5

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