Most of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is located in semi-arid regions or arid regions, which has very sensitive ecosystem. Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is honored as the “water tower of Asia”, it is also the origin of many outflow rivers, such as Yangtze River, Yellow River, Nujiang River, Lantsang River and the Yarlung Zangbo River. 

Using data of tree-ring widths, this research reconstructed the Namlin precipitation series in the past 526 years, analyzed the characteristic of precipitation variations and compared with the regional precipitation series on the Southern Tibetan Plateau. It provided the reliable data to us to know the characteristic of precipitation variations on the Southern Tibetan Plateau. 

The relationship between the tree growth and climate was analyzed by the application of tree-ring-width proxy of Tibetan junipers (S. tibetica) at the Namlin Region. The results showed that annual precipitation was the controlling factor for radial growth at study sites.  

Compared with Linzhou and the regional precipitation on the Southern Tibetan Plateau, both the dry and wet intervals contemporaneously occurred in the decadal scales during the last 500 years, implying that the regional climate might be influenced by the similar climate dynamics. 

This research is financially supported by the Youth Fund of CAERREI (51Y251A51), National Major S&R Project of China (2010CB950104) and the Cross Functional Team of CAS (29Y329B91). This research has been published on the Journal of Lanzhou University (Natural Sciences), Vol. 50 No. 3, Jun. 2014.