Coupled Pacific Rim megadroughts contributed to the fall of Ming Dynasty’s capital in 1644 CE

Historical documents provide evidence for regional droughts preceding the political turmoil and fall of Beijing in 1644 CE, and more than 20 million people died in northern China over the late Ming famine period. However, the significance of environmental drivers and large-scale spatiotemporal climatic patterns that could perhaps be linked with this major unrest remain unknown. Here, we provide evidence for persistent megadroughts from 1576-1593 and 1624-1643 derived from a tree-ring network across northern China and coinciding with exceptionally cold conditions just before the fall of Beijing. We show that these regional deviations are part of a series of megadroughts along the Pacific Rim, which not only impacted the ecology and society in monsoonal northern China, but also exacerbated external geopolitical and economic pressures. This conclusion is supported by last millennium reanalysis and numerical model simulations revealing internally driven Pacific sea surface temperature variations and the predominance of decadal scale La Niña-like conditions to be the drivers of decreased rainfall in northern China and the North and South American monsoon regions. These teleconnective patterns provide a mechanistic explanation for reoccurring drought during the late Ming Dynasty and the environmental framework fostering the fall of Ming Dynasty’s capital in 1644 CE.

历史文献为1644年明朝政治动荡和北京陷落之前发生的地区性干旱提供了证据，并且在明朝晚期的饥荒期间，中国北方超过两千万人丧生。然而，那些可能与环境驱动力和大规模时空气候模式相关联，并可能与这一重大动荡有关联的重要性仍然是个谜。在此，我们通过跨越中国北方的树轮网络提供了关于1576-1593年和1624-1643年持续大干旱的证据，这些干旱与北京陷落前异常寒冷的气候条件相吻合。我们表明，这些区域性的偏差是太平洋沿岸一系列大干旱的一部分，这不仅影响了季风区中国北部的生态和社会，还加剧了外部地缘政治和经济压力。这一结论得到了上千年再分析和数值模型模拟的支持，揭示了内部驱动的太平洋海面温度变化以及十年尺度类似拉尼娜现象条件的普遍存在，是导致中国北方以及南北美洲季风区降雨减少的驱动因素。这些遥相关模式为明朝晚期反复出现的干旱以及促成1644年明朝首都陷落的生态环境框架提供了机制性的解释。