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

Historical documents provide evidence for regional droughts preceding the political turmoil and fall of Beijing in 1644 CE,when more than 20 million people died in northern China during the late Ming famine period.However,the role climate and environmental changes may have played in this pivotal event in Chinese history remains unclear.Here,we provide tree-ring evidence of persistent megadroughts from1576 to 1593 CE and from 1628 to 1644 CE in northern China,which coincided with exceptionally cold summers just before the fall of Beijing.Our analysis reveals that these regional hydroclimatic extremes are part of a series of megadroughts along the Pacific Rim,which not only impacted the ecology and society of monsoonal northern China,but likely also exacerbated external geopolitical and economic pressures.This finding is corroborated by last millennium reanalysis data and numerical climate model simulations revealing internally driven Pacific sea surface temperature variations and the predominance of decadal scale La Ni?a-like conditions to be responsible for precipitation decreases over northern China,as well as extensive monsoon regions in the Americas.These teleconnection patterns provide a mechanistic explanation for reoccurring drought spells during the late Ming Dynasty and the environmental framework fostering the fall of Beijing in 1644 CE,and the subsequent demise of the Ming Dynasty.

A 217-year precipitation reconstruction in the Habahe area, Xinjiang, Northeast China

Evaluating long-term changes in precipitation resources is important for accurate hydrological evaluation and forecasting,water security and rational allocation of water resources.For this purpose in the Xinjiang Habahe area,tree-ring specimens were collected from Picea obo-vata,Larix sibirica,and Betula platyphylla to establish a tree-ring width chronology,which was used to analyse a correlation with the average temperature and precipitation per month for 1958-2016.Based on correlation coefficients for monthly temperature and precipitation with the chro-nology of tree-ring widths,radial tree growth was mainly restricted by precipitation,and tree-ring width chronology was significantly correlated with overall precipitation from the previous July to the next June(r=0.641,P<0.01).The above results were used to establish a transformation equa-tion,and the overall precipitation from the previous July to the following June from 1800 to 2016 in Habahe was reconstructed after adjusted degrees of freedom,and obtain an explanatory rate of the variation up to 41.1%(40.0%).In addition to the reliability of the reconstructed values,the stability of the conversion function was determined via the“leave-one-out”method,which is commonly used in research on tree rings,and by cross-checking the conversion function with the reduced error value(RE),product mean test(t),with a sign test(ST).During the last 217 years,there were nine dry periods:1803-1829,1861-1865,1872-1885,1892-1905,1916-1923,1943-1954,1961-1966,1973-1981,and 2005-2011;and 12 wet periods:1830-1834,1836-1860,1866-1871,1886-1891,1906-1915,1925-1930,1934-1942,1955-1960,1967-1972,1982-1996,2000-2004,and 2012-2016.Comparisons of the reconstruc-tions for neighboring regions and a spatial correlation analy-sis showed that the reconstructed sequence of the present precipitation data better represented the changes in precipi-tation in Habahe.Additionally,a power spectrum analysis revealed that precipitation over the past 217 years in Habahe Province exhibited 2-5 years of quasiperiodic variation.A power spectrum analysis and wavelet analysis indicated that El Niño-Southern Oscillation influenced the precipitation cycles.This reconstruction provides more information on high-frequency precipitation,which is an important supple-ment to the existing tree-ring reconstruction of precipitation in the study area.The reconstruction of regional high-resolu-tion precipitation changes over the last several hundred years provides unique,important data for understanding regional differences in climate at the decadal-centennial scale.