Swiss tree rings reveal warm and wet summers during medieval times

Kress, Anne; Hangartner, Sarah; Bugmann, Harald; Büntgen, Ulf; Frank, David; Leuenberger, Markus; Siegwolf, Rolf; Saurer, Matthias

doi:10.1002/2013gl059081

Cited by 34 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 39 publications

(65 reference statements)

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“…It is necessary to put the present climate regime in the context of long-term perspectives, which forces a reliance on natural proxy records to reconstruct the past climate. Tree rings have been widely applied in global climate change studies and paleoclimate reconstructions on both regional and global scales because they offer accurate and continuous temporal record as well as being are widespread and easily replicated (Corona et al, 2010;Popa and Bouriaud, 2014;Kress et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A 414-year tree-ring-based April–July minimum temperature reconstruction and its implications for the extreme climate events, northeast China

Lyu

Zhang

et al. 2016

Clim. Past

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Abstract.A ring-width series was used as a proxy to reconstruct the past 414-year record of April-July minimum temperature at Laobai Mountain, northeast China. The chronology was built using standard tree-ring procedures for providing comparable information in this area while preserving low-frequency signals. By analyzing the relationship between the tree-ring chronology of Korean pine (Pinus koraiensis) and meteorological data, we found that the standard chronology was significantly correlated with the April-July minimum temperature (r = 0.757, p < 0.01). Therefore, the April-July minimum temperature since 1600 (more than six trees, but the expressed population signal (EPS) is greater than 0.85 since 1660) was reconstructed by this tree-ring series. The reconstruction equation accounted for 57.3 % of temperature variation, and it was proved reliable by testing with several methods (e.g., sign test, product mean test, reduction of the error, and coefficient of efficiency). Reconstructed April-July minimum temperature on Laobai Mountain showed six major cold periods (1605-1616, 1645-1677, 1684-1691, 1911-1924, 1930-1942, and 1951-1969) and seven major warm periods (1767-1785, 1787-1793, 1795-1807, 1819-1826, 1838-1848, 1856-1873, and 1991-2008) during the past 414 years. The reconstructed low-temperature periods in the 17th and early 18th century were consistent with the Little Ice Age (LIA) in the Northern Hemisphere, and the rate of warming in the 19th century was significantly slower than that in the late 20th century. In addition, the reconstructed series was fairly consistent with the historical and natural disaster records of extreme climate events (e.g., cold damage and frost disaster) in this area. This temperature record provides new evidence of past climate variability, and can be used to predict the climate trend in the future in northeast China.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A 414-year tree-ring-based April–July minimum temperature reconstruction and its implications for the extreme climate events, northeast China

Lyu

Zhang

et al. 2016

Clim. Past

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“…on a 65% steep, NW-facing slope. Larch trees from this sub-alpine belt have historically been used as construction timber [21], providing the source material for millennium-length climate reconstructions based on tree-ring growth and stable isotope parameters [17,19,45,46]. European larch is a cold-tolerant tree, widely abundant and commonly cultivated in the Alps.…”

Section: Site Description and Sample Preparationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Records reaching further back in time, even covering the entire past millennium, are much rarer and often combine data from living and subfossil trees [12,13]. The latter can be dead wood on the ground [8], material from logs covered in sediment [14], stems that fell into shallow lakes [7,15], and beams from historical buildings [16][17][18][19][20], such as the old huts and barns made of resistant Larix decidua boles in high elevation environments of the Swiss Alps [21]. Table 1.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Circumferential and Longitudinal δ13C Variability in a Larix decidua Trunk from the Swiss Alps

Esper

Riechelmann

Holzkämper

2020

Forests

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Tree-ring stable isotopes are insightful proxies providing information on pre-instrumental climate fluctuations, yet the variability of these data within a tree trunk has not been fully explored. Here, we analyze longitudinal and circumferential changes in tree-ring δ 13 C values from 1991-2010, considering seven height levels from 1 to 13 m above ground and six sampling directions (radii) separated by 60 • around the stem. The disk samples were taken from a 360-year old European larch (Larix decidua Mill.) that grew at 1675 m above sea level in the Simplon Valley, Switzerland. Results show that the circumferential δ 13 C variability, defined as the difference between the minimum and maximum isotope values within a single ring at a certain height, ranges from 0.5 to 2.8% . These differences appear substantial as they match the range of year-to-year variations retained in long tree-ring δ 13 C time series used for climate reconstruction. The assessment of longitudinal variability demonstrated a systematic change of~0.1% m −1 towards isotopically heavier (less negative) δ 13 C values with increasing tree height, likely reflecting a vertical gradient towards isotopically heavier needle tissue due to changing microclimatic conditions and CO 2 stratification within the canopy. Calibration against regional climate data indicates no substantial signal changes in δ 13 C values within the trunk. We conclude that the longitudinal isotope gradient adds uncertainty to long δ 13 C chronologies derived from subfossil material of unknown (and changing) sampling heights. The large circumferential variability recorded in the sub-alpine larch suggests that more than two cores are needed to analyze absolute δ 13 C values representative for each tree.

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“…This restriction forces the researchers to continuously find new ways and methods to reconstruct climatic fluctuations. Dendrochronology has been widely applied in climatic reconstruction for local territories and on the global scale for both climatic reconstructions of the past few centuries and paleoclimatic reconstructions because it is rather precise, extensively used, and a replicable instrument (Corona et al, 2010;Popa and Bouriaund, 2014;Kress et al, 2014;Lyu et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Autumn–winter minimum temperature changes in the southern Sikhote-Alin mountain range of northeastern Asia since 1529 AD

et al. 2018

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Abstract. The aim of our research was to reconstruct climatic parameters (for the first time for the Sikhote-Alin mountain range) and to compare them with global climate fluctuations. As a result, we have found that one of the most important limiting factors for the study area is the minimum temperatures of the previous autumnwinter season (August-December), and this finding perfectly conforms to that in other territories. We reconstructed the previous August-December minimum temperature for 485 years, from 1529 to 2014. We found 12 cold periods (1535-1540, 1550-1555, 1643-1649, 1659-1667, 1675-1689, 1722-1735, 1791-1803, 1807-1818, 1822-1827, 1836-1852, 1868-1887, 1911-1925) and seven warm periods (1560-1585, 1600-1610, 1614-1618, 1738-1743, 1756-1759, 1776-1781, 1944-2014). These periods correlate well with reconstructed data for the Northern Hemisphere and the neighboring territories of China and Japan. Our reconstruction has 3-, 9-, 20-, and 200-year periods, which may be in line with high-frequency fluctuations in El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the short-term solar cycle, Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) fluctuations, and the 200-year solar activity cycle, respectively. We suppose that the temperature of the North Pacific, expressed by the PDO may make a major contribution to regional climate variations. We also assume that the regional climatic response to solar activity becomes apparent in the temperature changes in the northern part of Pacific Ocean and corresponds to cold periods during the solar minimum. These comparisons show that our climatic reconstruction based on tree ring chronology for this area may potentially provide a proxy record for long-term, large-scale past temperature patterns for northeastern Asia. The reconstruction reflects the global traits and local variations in the climatic processes of the southern territory of the Russian Far East for more than the past 450 years.

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Swiss tree rings reveal warm and wet summers during medieval times

Cited by 34 publications

References 39 publications

A 414-year tree-ring-based April–July minimum temperature reconstruction and its implications for the extreme climate events, northeast China

A 414-year tree-ring-based April–July minimum temperature reconstruction and its implications for the extreme climate events, northeast China

Circumferential and Longitudinal δ13C Variability in a Larix decidua Trunk from the Swiss Alps

Autumn–winter minimum temperature changes in the southern Sikhote-Alin mountain range of northeastern Asia since 1529 AD

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