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June–July Temperature Reconstruction of Kashmir Valley from Tree Rings of Himalayan Pindrow Fir

The Himalaya is one of the major mountain ecosystems that is most likely to be impacted by climate change. The main drawback in understanding climate change in the remote Himalayan ecosystems is the lack of long-term instrumental climate records. Reconstructing past climates from tree-rings offers a useful proxy for adding data to the instrumental climate records. In this study, climatically sensitive tree-rings of Himalayan fir (Abies pindrow) were used for reconstruction of mean June–July temperatures of Kashmir valley. Total ring-width chronology was built from 60 tree-ring cores growing near the higher altitudinal limits of the species. The radial growth showed a strong positive response to growing season temperature. The strong response of site chronology to mean June–July temperatures was used for reconstruction purposes. Mean June–July temperatures of Kashmir valley were reconstructed since 1773 from residual site chronology. Though the reconstruction did not show any strong long-term trend, on a centennial-scale, 20th-century summers were the warmest with a mean annual summer temperature of 22.99 °C. Seven of the warmest years and five of the warmest decades were seen in the 20th century. The reconstruction for 1773–2012 showed 23 extreme hot summers above the hot threshold of a 23.47 °C mean temperature and 19 extreme cold years below the cold threshold of a 22.46 °C mean summer temperature. The cold years in the reconstruction did not coincide with known volcanic eruptions. This reconstruction will help in providing a better understanding of regional climate change.