Drought modulated by North Atlantic sea surface temperatures for the last 3,000 years along the northwestern Gulf of Mexico

• A new quantitative drought proxy is developed by relating the element distribution of playa sediments to tree-ring records.
• The transfer function is used to extend a 950-year tree-ring drought record to ca. 3000 BP.
• The extended drought record corresponds to regional drought records and a proxy for North Atlantic sea surface temperatures.
• This drought proxy provides the opportunity to extend drought records in semi-arid regions.

In 2012 the most severe United States drought since the 1930's occurred, highlighting the need for a better understanding of the climate factors driving droughts. Spatial-temporal analysis of United States precipitation data from 1900 to 1999 indicates that the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) primarily modulates drought frequency. Tree rings provide the highest resolution and most spatially distributed drought records beyond secular time-series; however, as most tree-ring records only extend to ca. 1000 years before present (BP), a new broadly distributed, quantitative, multi-millennial, proxy of past drought is needed to determine if the AMO modulated drought across North America through the late Holocene. In this study, we develop a new quantitative drought proxy from a transfer function between X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) derived elemental data from a Texas playa and a tree-ring drought record. Using this transfer function, a 954-year tree-ring drought record was extended to ca. 3000 BP. Changes in the extended drought record correspond with timing of the Roman Climate Optimum, Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age, and changes in the AMO as recorded in a proxy record derived from North Atlantic ice-rafted debris. These results indicate that lacustrine-derived XRF element data can be used as a quantitative tool to reconstruct past drought records, and suggest that AMO modulated drought in southern Texas for the last 3000 years. Additional studies using XRF-derived element data as a drought proxy are needed to determine the utility of this proxy in non-playa lacustrine systems.