Modern aridity in the Altai-Sayan mountain range derived from multiple millennial proxies

Abstract

Abstract Temperature and precipitation changes are crucial for larch trees growing at high-elevation sites covered by permafrost in the Altai-Sayan mountain range (ASMR). To contextualize the amplitude of recent climate fluctuations, we have to look into the past by analyzing millennial paleoclimatic archives recording both temperature and precipitation. We developed annually resolved 1500-year tree-ring cellulose chronologies (δ13Ccell, δ18Ocell), and used these new records to reconstruct the variability in local summer precipitation and air temperature. We combined our new local reconstructions with existing paleoclimatic archives available for the Altai. The data show a strong decreasing trend by ca. 49% in regional summer precipitation, along with a regional summer temperature increase towards the twenty-first century, relative to the preceding 1500 years. Modern dry conditions (1966–2016 CE) in the ASMR are the result of simultaneous summer warming and decreased precipitation. Our new reconstructions also demonstrate that climate change in the ASMR is much stronger compared to the global average.