A comparison of different reconstructed climate series of the southern China

Abstract

Based on studies of published articles, the temperature reconstructions of southern China over the last two millennia from those articles were analyzed. 9 temperature reconstruction series from 6 articles published in different scientific journals were taken into further study. The region of “southern China” is defined as the south of the Qinling-Huaihe Line. From the analysis, during the Medieval Warm Period (950 –1250 AD), the temperature of southern China was generally the highest among the whole 2000 year period and started to decline afterwards. The temperature was lower than the 1900-1940 AD mean value during the Little Ice Age (1450 –1850 AD) except the 18thcentury. Among the 9 temperature reconstruction series, the 2 series reconstructed by lake sediments were found to have disparity with other series which were reconstructed by historical documents about phonological records and local weather conditions. The disparity might possibly be due to the type of climate proxies used plus the difference of climate between Taiwan and the mainland of China.