Abstract
Southeastern China is pivotal for understanding tropical cyclone (TC) behavior in the Northwest Pacific, the most active TC basin on Earth. However, short instrumental records limit our knowledge of past tropical cyclone precipitation (TCP) and its response to human-driven warming. Here we combine multi-year monitoring of xylem cell formation with a process-based tree growth model to demonstrate that latewood width in coastal conifers is an effective proxy for TCP. We build a latewood chronology from the western Taiwan Strait and reconstruct July-September TCP from 1846 to 2020, explaining 62.6% of observed variance. The reconstruction reveals a marked increase in interannual TCP variability since the 1940s, closely associated with enhanced variability of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. This work provides physiological evidence linking TCP to intra-annual tree-ring dynamics and establishes tree rings as a proxy for high-resolution TC reconstructions and climate risk assessment across the Pacific Rim.
Data availability
The tropical cyclone precipitation reconstruction data can be downloaded at https://zenodo.org/records/16990266, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16990266.
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42425101 and 42301058), and Fujian Institute for Cross-Straits Integrated Development (LARH24JBO7). JA was supported by the research Grant 23-05272S of the Czech Science Foundation and long-term research development project No. RVO 67985939 of the Czech Academy of Sciences. The authors thank A. Garside for editing the English text.
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Conceptualization: C.W., K.F., and F.Z. Methodology: C.W., K.F., F.Z., P.W., H.W., and Z.M. Investigation: C.W., F.Z., Z.D. Visualization: K.F., J.G., S.R., and J.A. Funding acquisition: K.F., J.G., and J.A. Project administration: K.F. Supervision: K.F., J.G., S.R., and J.A. Writing— original draft: C.W. and K.F. Writing—review and editing: K.F., S.R., J.L., C.A.-M., S.L., J.J.C., H.W.L., and J.A.
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Communications Earth and Environment thanks Justin Maxwell and the other anonymous reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary handling editors: Yiming Wang and Somaparna Ghosh [A peer review file is available].
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Wang, C., Fang, K., Zhou, F. et al. Enhanced tropical cyclone precipitation variability is linked to Pacific Decadal Oscillation since the 1940s.
Commun Earth Environ (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-03129-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-03129-9
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