NOAA Paleoclimatology Program - Cook et al. 2010 Monsoon Asia Drought Atlas (MADA)

NOAA Paleoclimatology Program, NCDC Paleoclimatology Branch

Asian Monsoon Failure and Megadrought During the Last Millennium

Fig. 4. Pan Pacific drought patterns during (A) the Great Drought (1876-1878) and (B) the 1918-1919 ENSO event	Asian Monsoon Failure and Megadrought During the Last Millennium Science Vol. 328, No. 5977, pp. 486 - 489, 23 April 2010 DOI: 10.1126/science.1185188 Edward R. Cook¹, Kevin J. Anchukaitis¹, Brendan M. Buckley¹, Rosanne D. D'Arrigo¹, Gordon C. Jacoby¹, William E. Wright^1,2 ¹Tree-Ring Laboratory, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, New York 10964 USA ² School of Forestry and Natural Resources, National Taiwan University, Taipei 10617 Taiwan
ABSTRACT: The Asian monsoon system affects more than half of humanity worldwide, yet the dynamical processes that govern its complex spatiotemporal variability are not sufficiently understood to model and predict its behavior, due in part to inadequate long-term climate observations. Here we present the Monsoon Asia Drought Atlas (MADA), a seasonally resolved gridded spatial reconstruction of Asian monsoon drought and pluvials over the past millennium, derived from a network of tree-ring chronologies. MADA provides the spatiotemporal details of known historic monsoon failures and reveals the occurrence, severity, and fingerprint of previously unknown monsoon megadroughts and their close linkages to large-scale patterns of tropical Indo-Pacific sea surface temperatures. MADA thus provides a long-term context for recent monsoon variability that is critically needed for climate modeling, prediction, and attribution.

Download data from the WDC Paleo archive:
Asian Monsoon Region Drought Reconstructions:
Data Description
534 grid point reconstructions of JJA PDSI for the Asian monsoon region
534 longitude-latitude pairs that locate the grid point reconstructions
534 actual JJA PDSI series used for calibration and verification
Calibration and verification statistics
netCDF file containing 534 grid point reconstructions of JJA PDSI

Data Visualizations:
Time series plots
Gridded maps

To read or view the full study, please visit the Science website.
It was published in Science, Vol. 328, No. 5977, pp. 486 - 489, 23 April 2010
DOI: 10.1126/science.1185188

Please also see the Perspective by Wahl and Morrill:
"Toward Understanding and Predicting Monsoon Patterns"
Science 328:437-438.


http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/cook2010/cook2010.html Downloaded Friday, 25-May-2012 18:17:54 EDT Last Updated Friday, 29-Oct-2010 15:39:39 EDT by paleo@noaa.gov Please see the Paleoclimatology Contact Page or the NCDC Contact Page if you have questions or comments.

Asian Monsoon Failure and Megadrought During the Last Millennium

1Tree-Ring Laboratory, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, New York 10964 USA 2 School of Forestry and Natural Resources, National Taiwan University, Taipei 10617 Taiwan

¹Tree-Ring Laboratory, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, New York 10964 USA
² School of Forestry and Natural Resources, National Taiwan University, Taipei 10617 Taiwan