Recent centennial drought on the Tibetan Plateau is outstanding within the past 3500 years

Given growing concerns about global climate change, it is critical to understand both historical and current shifts in the hydroclimate, particularly in regions critically entwined with global circulation. The Tibetan Plateau, the Earth's largest and highest plateau, is a nexus for global atmospheric processes, significantly influencing East Asian hydroclimate dynamics through the synergy of the Asian Monsoon and the Westerlies. Yet, understanding historical and recent hydroclimate fluctuations and their wide-ranging ecological and societal consequences remains challenging due to short instrumental observations and partly ambiguous proxy reconstructions. Here, we present a precisely-dated 3476-year precipitation reconstruction derived from tree-ring δ<sup>18</sup>O data on the Tibetan Plateau, representing one of the few multi-millennia-long annually-resolved terrestrial δ<sup>18</sup>O records to date. Our findings reveal that the 20<sup>th</sup> century drought extremes are severe within the past three millennia, and likely linked to the weakening of both the Asian Monsoon and Westerlies due to anthropogenic aerosol emissions. Additionally, our analyses identified three distinct stages (110 BC-AD 280, AD 330-770 and AD 950-1300) characterized by shifts toward arid hydroclimate conditions, corresponding to significant social unrest and dynasty collapses, which underscores the potential societal impacts of severe hydroclimatic shifts.

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Publication Details

Journal
Nature Communications
Published
2025-02-03
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-56687-z
Citations
19
Primary Topic
Tree-ring climate responses
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
24.71

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article

Recent centennial drought on the Tibetan Plateau is outstanding within the past 3500 years

Lidong Mo, Ulf Büntgen, Quan Zhang, Congxi Fang et al.
19 citations
Nature Communications
Tree-ring climate responses
24.71
article

Recent centennial drought on the Tibetan Plateau is outstanding within the past 3500 years

Lidong Mo, Ulf Büntgen, Quan Zhang, Congxi Fang, Kerstin Treydte, Hans W. Linderholm, Ruoshi Liu, Hai Cheng, Qiufang Cai, Achim Bräuning, Jussi Grießinger, Ashish Sinha, Changfeng Sun, Wenju Cai, Constantin M. Zohner, Zhisheng An, Lu Wang, Ying Duan Lei, Liang Ning, Lingfeng Wan, Thomas Ward Crowther, Meng Ren, Steven W. Leavitt, Qiang Li, Junyan Sun, Wei Gong, Linlin Cui, Deliang Chen, Yu Liu, Yi Song, Huiming Song, Weijian Zhou, Xuxiang Li
article en
19 citations

Abstract

Given growing concerns about global climate change, it is critical to understand both historical and current shifts in the hydroclimate, particularly in regions critically entwined with global circulation. The Tibetan Plateau, the Earth's largest and highest plateau, is a nexus for global atmospheric processes, significantly influencing East Asian hydroclimate dynamics through the synergy of the Asian Monsoon and the Westerlies. Yet, understanding historical and recent hydroclimate fluctuations and their wide-ranging ecological and societal consequences remains challenging due to short instrumental observations and partly ambiguous proxy reconstructions. Here, we present a precisely-dated 3476-year precipitation reconstruction derived from tree-ring δ<sup>18</sup>O data on the Tibetan Plateau, representing one of the few multi-millennia-long annually-resolved terrestrial δ<sup>18</sup>O records to date. Our findings reveal that the 20<sup>th</sup> century drought extremes are severe within the past three millennia, and likely linked to the weakening of both the Asian Monsoon and Westerlies due to anthropogenic aerosol emissions. Additionally, our analyses identified three distinct stages (110 BC-AD 280, AD 330-770 and AD 950-1300) characterized by shifts toward arid hydroclimate conditions, corresponding to significant social unrest and dynasty collapses, which underscores the potential societal impacts of severe hydroclimatic shifts.

Nature CommunicationsVol. 16(1)
University of Bern (CH), CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere (AU), Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research (CH), University of Arizona (US), Nanjing Normal University (CN), Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (DE), University of Salzburg (AT), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN), Peking University (CN), Masaryk University (CZ), University of Cambridge (GB), Chengdu University of Information Technology (CN), Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (CH), California State University, Dominguez Hills (US), ETH Zurich (CH), Institute of Subtropical Agriculture (CN), Czech Academy of Sciences, Global Change Research Institute (CZ), Centre for Southern Hemisphere Oceans Research (AU), Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment (CN), Jiangsu Center for Collaborative Innovation in Geographical Information Resource Development and Application (CN), Institute of Earth Environment (CN), Ocean University of China (CN), Xi'an Jiaotong University (CN), University of Gothenburg (SE)
Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Sino-Swedish Centre for Tree-Ring Research
Climate action
Openalex Percentile: Top 0%
Tree-ring climate responses
24.71
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