Reconstruction of Summer Rainfall over the Last Five Centuries Based on Oak Chronology (Western Pomerania, Poland)

Abstract

The quantity and distribution of summer rainfall in Poland is one of the main elements of weather and makes a strong impact on the economy, mostly agriculture, stockbreeding, and forestry and the associated industries. Droughts or heavy rains, occurring increasingly more frequently in summer, are a threat for human activity. This study presents a nearly 500-year-long reconstruction of precipitation in the June–July period for northwestern Poland based on an analysis of tree-ring widths in the native oak species (Quercus spp.) from 24 study plots located in Western Pomerania. Due to the frequent droughts occurring in the last four decades, and due to strong air pollution in the 1960s–1990s, we chose the period 1901–1941 as the calibration period. The performed reconstruction is characterized by a high annual variability in precipitation sums for June and July of the year of the tree-ring formation from 1565 to 2020, with an average rainfall sum for this period equal to 131.7 mm (standard deviation: 28.4 mm). Periods with rainfall shortages in summer occurred in the following years: 1579–1596, 1629–1637, 1650–1655, 1669–1672, 1703–1706, 1739–1748, 1757–1760, 1765–1768, 1808–1811, 1838–1841, 1856–1859, 1958–1961, 1965–1968, 1981–1983, and 2002–2006. Periods with higher than average rainfall in June and July occurred in the following years: 1573–1578, 1605–1609, 1613–1617, 1638–1642, 1694–1698, 1776–1780, 1791–1794, 1828–1831, 1852–1855, 1863–1866, 1877–1879, and 1944–1946. Our reconstruction was verified based on the historical records, available from the XVI century onward. Not all the reconstructed summer precipitation values, however, were confirmed by historical records. Notably, however, the historical data are often incomplete and imprecise. Further, the tree-ring width in the oak depends not only on the precipitation in June and July but also, e.g., on the pluvial conditions late in the previous growth season.

Keywords

• reconstruction
• summer precipitation
• tree-ring width (TRW)
• dendroclimatology
• NW Poland
• <i>Quercus</i> spp.