Tree ring drought records from Kishtwar, Jammu and Kashmir, northwest Himalaya, India

Abstract

Droughts in semi-arid and arid regions of the northwest Himalaya are very common causing distress to socioeconomic systems. Our understanding on natural variability in droughts in the northwest Himalaya in long-term perspective is limited largely due to paucity of observational and high-resolution proxy records. We developed a 275-years (A.D. 1740–2014) long Standardized Precipitation Index (eight months SPI of May, SPI8-May) reconstruction using ring-width chronology of Himalayan cedar (Cedrus deodara (Roxb.) G. Don) from Kishtwar, Jammu and Kashmir in the northwest Himalaya, India. The most conspicuous feature of reconstruction is pluvial 1950s, 1990s and dry 1970s. The wettest phase of 1990s is followed by a distinct drying since 2000s in Kishtwar. The reconstructed SPI8-May series showed very good consistency with tree–ring-based upper Indus basin discharge and gridded summer (June–July–August) PDSI data of the northwest Himalaya–Karakoram region. Such a consistency in SPI8-May, Indus discharge and summer PDSI in westerly dominated region of the Himalaya–Karakoram region underscores potential utility of SPI reconstructions in understanding climate change over the region in long-term perspective.