Decadal-scale variability of warm season temperature in Beijing over the past 2650 years

A continuous record of surface temperature for the past 2650 years was obtained in an earlier study from a Beijing stalagmite based on sedimentary layer counting and thickness measurements.Singular spectrum analysis,multi-taper and wavelet spectral analyses are used in this study to identify decadal-scale signals and their origins in this record.Besides long-term cycles of solar origin identified in earlier studies,this record contains cycles that dominate temperature with periods of 102-70,66-50,31,25-22,19,15,12 and 9 years.The 102-70,25-22,12 and 9 year cycles are attributable to solar variation,while the others are likely to be related to low-latitude ocean forcing.These results suggest that century-scale changes in the Beijing summer temperature over the past 2650 years are primarily controlled by solar variation,while ocean-atmospheric interactions play a prominent role in modu-lating decadal-scale variability.