Proxy-based temperature reconstruction in China for the Holocene

Abstract

The temperature variation in China is closely related to the dynamics of global climate change. In order to reveal its possible connections with global climate during the Holocene, we present a nationwide temperature reconstruction in China for the past 12,000 years, based on multiple proxies with three statistical methods, including empirical orthogonal function, composite-plus-scale, and simple arithmetic average. Our reconstruction shows that the late 20th-century temperature in China is the highest at least over the past millennium. Although the low temperature in the period of 10,000–12,000 yr BP was mainly related to the North Atlantic cool conditions, the reconstructed China's temperature followed solar forcing variations more closely than climatic influence from the North Atlantic. The Asian Monsoon was also closely connected to temperature change in China over the Holocene.