Seeing the Wood from the Trees

1999/05/07 by Keith R. Briffa, Timothy J. Osborn · 9 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Environmental Science · #Tree-ring climate responses #Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics #Geology and Paleoclimatology Research #Environmental science

paper · doi:10.1126/science.284.5416.926

openalex publication_date 1999/05/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31

Abstract

Reconstructing past climates is important if we are to distinguish anthropogenic warming from natural variability in the climate system. [Briffa and Osborn][1] discuss a recent study by Mann et al . that has extended their Northern Hemisphere climatic reconstruction to A.D. 1000 and explain why there are large uncertainties in the reconstruction of medieval and earlier temperatures on large spatial scales. Thus, although the 20th century was almost certainly the warmest of the millennium, the amount of anthropogenic warming remains uncertain. [1]: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/284/5416/926

Citations

• Reduced sensitivity of recent tree-growth to temperature at high northern latitudes
• Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries
• Reconstructed Northern Hemisphere annual temperature since 1671 based on high-latitude tree-ring data from North America
• High-resolution palaeoclimatic records for the last millennium: interpretation, integration and comparison with General Circulation Model control-run temperatures
• Tree ring width and density evidence of climatic and potential forest change in Alaska
• Arctic Environmental Change of the Last Four Centuries
• Climate Change Record in Subsurface Temperatures: A Global Perspective
• Northern hemisphere temperatures during the past millennium: Inferences, uncertainties, and limitations

Cited by

• Reconstructing hemispheric‐scale climates from multiple stalagmite records
• The Evolution of Climate Over the Last Millennium
• Low‐frequency temperature variations from a northern tree ring density network
• Temperature trends over the past five centuries reconstructed from borehole temperatures
• Large-scale temperature inferences from tree rings: a review
• On past temperatures and anomalous late‐20th‐century warmth
• The M&M Critique of the MBH98 Northern Hemisphere Climate Index: Update and Implications
• Millennial temperature reconstruction intercomparison and evaluation
• Hockey stick graph (global temperature) [wikipedia]