Dendroclimatological Reconstruction for the Last Sub-millennium in Central Japan

Abstract

Annually resolved winter temperature and summer precipitation of Central Japan were reconstructed for the past 800 years, back to AD 1177 from an absolutely dated ring-width chronology of Chamaecyparis obtuse. This chronology was constructed from 300-year-old living trees and old logs of early modern and medieval origins that exist in hundreds in the Kiso Forest on the foothills of Mt. Ontake (3,063 m a.s.l.). In general agreement with the well established past climatic change in Europe, the reconstructed winter temperature showed three distinctively different phases, i.e. a cooling trend toward the mid 1200s possibly corresponding to the termination of the Medieval Warm Epoch, followed by a long cold spell corresponding to the Little Ice Age till the early 1800s, and then by a conspicuous warming trend continuing up to present.

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Published by The Chinese Geoscience Union