July– August minimum temperature variability encoded in latewood blue intensity in southeastern China

Abstract

Tree‐ring blue intensity (BI) is well known as a relatively new proxy, which has been utilized for temperature reconstructions over some regions of the worldwide, and has great research potential. In this study, based on tree‐ring data from Pinus massoniana in northwestern Wuyi Mountains in southeastern China, we established a series of tree‐ring width (TRW), earlywood BI (EWBI), latewood BI (LWBI) and delta BI (ΔBI) chronologies. The correlation analysis results indicated that BI chronologies are better than TRW chronology in relation to climate factors; EWBI chronology is a positive correlation with three temperatures (Tmean, Tmax and Tmin), whereas ΔBI and LWBI chronologies almost are negative correlations with temperatures. The LWBI chronology exhibited the highest correlation in July–August Tmin during 1955–2021 ( r = −0.61, p

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