Monsoonal Precipitation Variation in the East Asia: Tree-Ring Evidences from Korea and Inner Mongolia

Three tree-ring monsoon rainfall reconstructions from China and Korea have been used in this paper to investigate the variation of the East Asian summer monsoon over the past 160 years. Statistically, there is no linear correlation on a year-by-year basis between Chinese and Korean monsoon rainfall, but region-wide synchronous variation on decadal-scale was observed. Strong monsoon intervals (more rainfall) were 1860-1890, 1910-1925,1940-1960, and weak monsoon periods (dry or even drought) were 1890-1910, 1925-1940, 1960- present. Reconstructions also display that the East Asian summer monsoon suddenly changed from strong into weak around mid-1920, and the East Asian summer monsoon keeps going weak after 1960.