Multi-species approach strengthens the reliability of dendroclimatic reconstructions in monsoonal Northeast China

The unstable sensitivity of growth-climate relationships greatly restricts tree-ring-based paleoclimate reconstructions, especially in areas with frequent “divergence” problems, such as the monsoonal zone of Northeast China. Here, we test the proposition that the tree species mixing method can improve the stability and reliability of reconstruction models in monsoonal areas, taking the tree-ring-based growing-season minimum temperature reconstruction for the northern Changbai Mountains in Northeast China as an example. Compared with previous temperature reconstruction models, ours is more stable and reliable and explains up to 70.4% of the variance. Our reconstruction is also highly consistent with historical records and tree-ring-based temperature reconstructions from the nearby Laobai and Zhangguangcai Mountains and across the Northern Hemisphere. Our reconstruction uses two different tree species and is more accurate than temperature reconstructions developed from a single species. Six significant warm and four cold periods are identified over the past 247 years (AD 1769–2015). The reconstruction indicates rapid warming since the 1980s, which is consistent with other instrumental and reconstructed records. The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and volcano eruptions play a crucial role in driving the growing-season minimum temperature in the northern Changbai Mountains.