Low-Frequency Signals in Long Tree-Ring Chronologies for Reconstructing Past Temperature Variability

2002/03/22 by Jan Esper, Edward R. Cook, Fritz Hans Schweingruber · 37 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Environmental Science · #Archaeology #Cartography #Climate change #Climatology #Dendrochronology #Dendroclimatology #Environmental science #Geography #Geology #Geology and Paleoclimatology Research #Northern Hemisphere #Oceanography #Physical geography #Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics #Range (aeronautics) #Scale (ratio) #Tree-ring climate responses

paper · doi:10.1126/science.1066208

openalex publication_date 2002/03/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31

Abstract

Preserving multicentennial climate variability in long tree-ring records is critically important for reconstructing the full range of temperature variability over the past 1000 years. This allows the putative "Medieval Warm Period" (MWP) to be described and to be compared with 20th-century warming in modeling and attribution studies. We demonstrate that carefully selected tree-ring chronologies from 14 sites in the Northern Hemisphere (NH) extratropics can preserve such coherent large-scale, multicentennial temperature trends if proper methods of analysis are used. In addition, we show that the average of these chronologies supports the large-scale occurrence of the MWP over the NH extratropics.

Citations

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