NOAA/WDS Paleoclimatology - Jacoby - Khoton Nuur - LASI - ITRDB MONG024

The Asian monsoon system affects more than half of humanity worldwide, yet the dynamical processes that govern its complex spatiotemporal variability are not sufficiently understood to model and predict its behavior, due in part to inadequate long-term climate observations. Here we present the Monsoon Asia Drought Atlas (MADA), a seasonally resolved gridded spatial reconstruction of Asian monsoon drought and pluvials over the past millennium, derived from a network of tree-ring chronologies. MADA provides the spatiotemporal details of known historic monsoon failures and reveals the occurrence, severity, and fingerprint of previously unknown monsoon megadroughts and their close linkages to large-scale patterns of tropical Indo-Pacific sea surface temperatures. MADA thus provides a long-term context for recent monsoon variability that is critically needed for climate modeling, prediction, and attribution.

亚洲季风系统影响着全球超过半数的人口，然而支配其复杂时空变率的动力过程尚未得到充分认知，难以对其行为进行模拟与预测，这在一定程度上归咎于长期气候观测数据的不足。本研究构建了季风亚洲干旱图集（Monsoon Asia Drought Atlas, MADA）：该数据集基于树木年轮年表网络，对过去千年间亚洲季风区的干旱与多雨事件进行了季节分辨率的格点化空间重建。该图集不仅呈现了已知历史季风异常事件的时空细节，还揭示了此前未被发现的季风特大干旱的发生过程、强度等级及其典型指纹特征，同时阐明了这些事件与热带印度洋-太平洋海表温度大尺度模态的紧密关联。因此，季风亚洲干旱图集为近期季风变率提供了长期背景参考，这正是气候模拟、预测与归因研究亟需的关键支撑。