A modern pollen–climate dataset from China and Mongolia: Assessing its potential for climate reconstruction

•Modern pollen dataset from China and Mongolia provides good climate reconstructions.•WA-PLS model is most suitable for this dataset and it has reliable predictive power.•Spatial autocorrelation affects the performance of cross-validation for MAT.•Lake sediment-surface and moss polster samples have the best fit in cross-validation.

A modern pollen dataset from China and Mongolia (18–52°N, 74–132°E) is investigated for its potential use in climate reconstructions. The dataset includes 2559 samples, 229 terrestrial pollen taxa and four climatic variables — mean annual precipitation (Pann): 35–2091 mm, mean annual temperature (Tann): –12.1–25.8 °C, mean temperature in the coldest month (Mtco): –33.8–21.7 °C, and mean temperature in the warmest month (Mtwa): 0.3–29.8 °C. Modern pollen–climate relationships are assessed using canonical correspondence analysis (CCA), Huisman–Olff–Fresco (HOF) models, the modern analogue technique (MAT), and weighted averaging partial least squares (WA-PLS). Results indicate that Pann is the most important climatic determinant of pollen distribution and the most promising climate variable for reconstructions, as assessed by the coefficient of determination between observed and predicted environmental values (r2) and root mean square error of prediction (RMSEP). Mtco and Mtwa may be reconstructed too, but with caution. Samples from different depositional environments influence the performance of cross-validation differently, with samples from lake sediment-surfaces and moss polsters having the best fit with the lowest RMSEP. The better model performances of MAT are most probably caused by spatial autocorrelation. Accordingly, the WA-PLS models of this dataset are deemed most suitable for reconstructing past climate quantitatively because of their more reliable predictive power.