Xianliang Zhang;Junxia Li;Xiaobo Liu;Zhenju Che

Standardization methods;Tree rings;Segment length curse;Detrending;EMPIRICAL MODE DECOMPOSITION;PRECIPITATION;VARIABILIT

Abstract Long tree-ring chronologies can be developed by overlapping data from living trees with data from fossil trees through cross-dating. However, low-frequency climate signals are lost when standardizing tree-ring series due to the “segment length curse”. To alleviate the segment length curse and thus improve the standardization method for developing long tree-ring chronologies, here we first calculated a mean value for all the tree ring series by overlapping all of the tree ring series. The growth trend of the mean tree ring width (i.e., cumulated average growth trend of all the series) was determined using ensemble empirical mode decomposition. Then the chronology was developed by dividing the mean value by the growth trend of the mean value. Our improved method alleviated the problem of trend distortion. Long-term signals were better preserved using the improved method than in previous detrending methods. The chronologies developed using the improved method were better correlated with climate than those developed using conservative methods. The improved standardization method alleviates trend distortion and retains more of the low-frequency climate signals.