Simulated and reconstructed winter temperature in the eastern China during the last millennium

Abstract

The reconstructed temperature anomalies in the eastern China were compared with the output from a 1000-year model simulation in an attempt to evaluate the model’s regional simulation skills and to understand the causes of climate change in China over the last millennium. The reconstructed data are the winter half-year temperature anomalies in the central region of eastern China (25° 40°N, east of 105°E) for the last 1000 years with a 30-year resolution. The model used is the global atmosphere-ocean coupled climate model, ECHO-G, which was driven by time-varying external forcings including solar radiation, volcanic eruptions, and greenhouse gas concentrations (CO2 and CH4) for the same period. The correlation coefficient between the simulated and reconstructed time series is 0.37, which is statistically significant at a confidence level of 97.5%. The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) during 1000 1300 A.D., the Little Ice Age (LIA) during 1300 1850 A.D. and the modern warming period after 1900 A.D. are all recognizable from both the simulated and reconstructed temperatures. The anomalies associated with the LIA and the modern warming simulated by the model are in good consistency with the reconstructed counterpart. In particular during the Maunder sun-spot minimum (1670 1710 A.D.), both the simulated and reconstructed temperature anomalies reach their minima without any phase difference. But in the earlier MWP, significant discrepancies exist between the simulation and the reconstruction, which might reflect the degrading quality of the reconstruction data. The range of the simulated anomalies 1.62 K) is comparable with that of reconstructed (2.0 K). Diagnosis of the model results indicates that, during the last millennium, variations in solar radiation and volcanic activity are the main controlling factors on regional temperature change, while in the recent 100 years, the change of the concentration of greenhouse gases plays most important role in explaining the rapid temperature rising.