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September–March mean temperature has been reconstructed to A.D. 1680 for the Kaiduhe River watershed on the southern slope of the Tien Shan Mountains, China, using the Picea schrenkiana tree-ring width. The reconstruction explains the variance of 47% in the observed mean temperature from 1953 to 2011. Power spectral and wavelet analyses demonstrated the existence of significant 50-year and 2- to 7-year cycles of variability. The results of the spatial correlations suggest that our reconstruction contains climatic signals for Central Asia. Warm periods occurred during 1696–1708, 1730–1748, 1784–1804, 1832–1855, 1892–1903, 1924–1928, 1937–1943, and 1987–2006; while the periods of 1685–1695, 1709–1729, 1749–1783, 1805–1831, 1856–1891, 1904–1923, 1929–1936, and 1944–1986 were relatively cold. The significant correlation coefficient between the reconstruction and the temperature reconstruction for the Urumqi River source reveals that the temperature variations in the annual cold period for the southern and the northern slope of the central Tien Shan Mountains are roughly synchronous over the last nearly 300 years. A comparison between the reconstruction and three winter North Atlantic Oscillation indexes revealed similar long-term trends.

July–June precipitation has been reconstructed back to A.D. 1464 for the Baluntai region on the southern slope of the central Tien Shan Mountains, China, using the Picea schrenkiana tree-ring width. The reconstruction explains the variance of 51% in the observed precipitation from 1959 to 2005. By employing a 21-year moving average to the reconstruction, nine periods with above average reconstructed precipitation comprised ∼1474–1503, 1550–1577, 1588–1619, 1658–1713, 1790–1812, 1833–1867, 1890–1907, 1923–1944, and 1988–1995∼; eight periods with below average reconstruction consisted of 1504–1549, 1578–1587, 1620–1657, 1714–1789, 1813–1832, 1868–1889, 1908–1922 and 1945–1987. The wet/dry periods of the reconstructed precipitation correspond well with other reconstructions. Some droughts in the historical documents are also precisely captured in the reconstruction. Precipitation variations for the southern slope of the central Tien Shan Mountains are roughly synchronous with that of the northern slope in the recent ∼300 year. Power spectral and wavelet analysis demonstrated the existence of significant ∼100-y, ∼60-y, ∼50-y, ∼16-y, ∼10-y and ∼2-y cycles of variability.