A regional high‐frequency reconstruction of May–June precipitation in the north Aegean from oak tree rings, A.D. 1089–1989

Abstract

May–June precipitation is the primary limiting factor in annual tree‐ring growth of the oaks of northeastern Greece and northwestern Turkey (39–42°N, 22–37°E). In a regional tree‐ring chronology of historic building and modern forest samples, the May–June precipitation explains at least 40% of the variance for 1900–1985, and is reconstructed here from A.D. 1089–1989. The reconstruction is compared to three other precipitation reconstructions for Turkey. The mean temperature of May and June is also a growth‐limiting factor owing to its effect on the availability of precipitation to the trees, but is more difficult to calibrate and reconstruct accurately owing to the trees' indirect response and the low number of long‐temperature records available for the interior of northwestern Turkey.An analysis of the various methods of manipulating oak tree‐ring data for regional climate reconstruction shows that removing all but the high‐frequency variability plus normalizing the oak data sets before combining them into a master chronology are optimal techniques for a reasonable precipitation reconstruction of the entire area over the instrumental period. However, these methods do remove the low‐frequency signal and dampen some of the evidence of local extremes in May–June precipitation; these issues are discussed here and will be addressed in future research. Copyright © 2007 Royal Meteorological Society

Species-specific climate response of oaks (Quercus spp.) under identical environmental conditions

“…For Q. frainetto there is a lack of research (Chatziphilippidis & Spyroglou 2004) particularly for climate-growth analysis using tree-rings. Griggs et al (2007) source of the timber. These findings could not be confirmed in this study, neither for Q. petraea, Q. robur, nor for Q. frainetto at this western edge of its distribution.…”

Spring temperature variability over Turkey since 1800 CE reconstructed from a broad network of tree-ring data

“…(Wick et al, 2003;Jones et al, 2006;Roberts et al, , 2012Kuzucuoglu et al, 2011;Woodbridge and Roberts, 2011;Ülgen et al, 2012;Dean et al, 2013) and tree rings, have been used to reconstruct long-term hydroclimate conditions over Turkey. Tree rings in particular have shown to provide useful information about the past climate of Turkey and were used intensively during the last decade to reconstruct precipitation in the Aegean (Griggs et al, 2007), Black Sea (Akkemik et al, , 2008Martin-Benitto et al, 2016), Mediterranean regions (Touchan et al, 2005a), as well as the Sivas (D'Arrigo and Cullen, 2001), southwestern (Touchan et al, 2003(Touchan et al, , 2007Köse et al, 2013), south-central and western Anatolian regions of Turkey. These studies used tree rings to reconstruct precipitation because available moisture is often found to be the most important limiting factor that influences radial growth of many tree species in Turkey.…”

A 560 yr summer temperature reconstruction for the Western Mediterranean basin based on stable carbon isotopes from <i>Pinus nigra</i> ssp. <i>laricio</i> (Corsica/France)

“…Trees are one of the best natural archives of recent and Holocene environmental conditions because they are widespread, sensitive to their environment and provide a continuous record with annual resolution. Tree-ring width chronologies from the Mediterranean have been used to reconstruct temperature (Büntgen et al, 2008;Guiot et al, 1988;Popa and Kern, 2009;Serre-Bachet and Guiot, 1987;Serre-Bachet, 1994), precipitation (Akkemik and Aras, 2005;Akkemik et al, 2005Akkemik et al, , 2008D'Arrigo and Cullen, 2001;Griggs et al, 2007; …”