scholarly journals 1200 years of warm-season temperature variability in central Scandinavia inferred from tree-ring density

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 1297-1312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peng Zhang ◽  
Hans W. Linderholm ◽  
Björn E. Gunnarson ◽  
Jesper Björklund ◽  
Deliang Chen
Keyword(s):  
Tree Ring ◽  
Regional Differences ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Warm Season ◽  
Local Environment ◽  
Temperature Variability ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Last Millennium ◽  
Ring Density ◽  
Temperature Reconstructions

Abstract. Despite the emergence of new high-resolution temperature reconstructions around the world, only a few cover the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA). Here we present C-Scan, a new Scots pine tree-ring density-based reconstruction of warm-season (April–September) temperatures for central Scandinavia back to 850 CE, extending the previous reconstruction by 250 years. C-Scan is based on samples collected in a confined mountain region, adjusted for their differences in altitude and local environment, and standardised using the new RSFi algorithm to preserve low-frequency signals. In C-Scan, the warm peak of MCA occurs ca. 1000–1100 CE, and the Little Ice Age (LIA) between 1550 and 1900 CE. Moreover, during the last millennium the coldest decades are found around 1600 CE, and the warmest 10 and 30 years occur in the most recent century. By comparing C-Scan with other millennium-long temperature reconstructions from Fennoscandia, regional differences in multi-decadal temperature variability, especially during the warm period of the last millennium are revealed. Although these differences could be due to methodological reasons, they may indicate asynchronous warming patterns across Fennoscandia. Further investigation of these regional differences and the reasons and mechanisms behind them are needed.

scholarly journals Influence of solar variability, CO<sub>2</sub> and orbital forcing between 1000 and 1850 AD in the IPSLCM4 model

2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 445-460 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Servonnat ◽  
P. Yiou ◽  
M. Khodri ◽  
D. Swingedouw ◽  
S. Denvil
Keyword(s):  
Climate Model ◽  
Internal Variability ◽  
Temperature Reconstruction ◽  
Temperature Variability ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Last Millennium ◽  
Orbital Forcing ◽  
Temperature Reconstructions ◽  
Temperature Signal ◽  
The Impact

Abstract. Studying the climate of the last millennium gives the possibility to deal with a relatively well-documented climate essentially driven by natural forcings. We have performed two simulations with the IPSLCM4 climate model to evaluate the impact of Total Solar Irradiance (TSI), CO2 and orbital forcing on secular temperature variability during the preindustrial part of the last millennium. The Northern Hemisphere (NH) temperature of the simulation reproduces the amplitude of the NH temperature reconstructions over the last millennium. Using a linear statistical decomposition we evaluated that TSI and CO2 have similar contributions to secular temperature variability between 1425 and 1850 AD. They generate a temperature minimum comparable to the Little Ice Age shown by the temperature reconstructions. Solar forcing explains ~80% of the NH temperature variability during the first part of the millennium (1000–1425 AD) including the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA). It is responsible for a warm period which occurs two centuries later than in the reconstructions. This mismatch implies that the secular variability during the MCA is not fully explained by the response of the model to the TSI reconstruction. With a signal-noise ratio (SNR) estimate we found that the temperature signal of the forced simulation is significantly different from internal variability over area wider than ~5.106 km2, i.e. approximately the extent of Europe. Orbital forcing plays a significant role in latitudes higher than 65° N in summer and supports the conclusions of a recent study on an Arctic temperature reconstruction over past two millennia. The forced variability represents at least half of the temperature signal on only ~30% of the surface of the globe. This study suggests that regional reconstructions of the temperature between 1000 and 1850 AD are likely to show weak signatures of solar, CO2 and orbital forcings compared to internal variability.

scholarly journals Influence of solar variability, CO<sub>2</sub> and orbital forcing during the last millennium in the IPSLCM4 model

2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 421-460
Author(s):  
J. Servonnat ◽  
P. Yiou ◽  
M. Khodri ◽  
D. Swingedouw ◽  
S. Denvil
Keyword(s):  
Climate Model ◽  
Internal Variability ◽  
Temperature Reconstruction ◽  
Temperature Variability ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Last Millennium ◽  
Orbital Forcing ◽  
Temperature Reconstructions ◽  
Temperature Signal ◽  
The Impact

Abstract. Studying the climate of the last millennium gives the possibility to deal with a relatively well-documented climate essentially driven by natural forcings. We have performed two simulations with the IPSLCM4 climate model to evaluate the impact of Total Solar Irradiance (TSI), CO2 and orbital forcing on secular temperature variability during the preindustrial part of the last millennium. The Northern Hemisphere (NH) temperature of the simulation reproduces the amplitude of the NH temperature reconstructions over the last millennium. Using a linear statistical decomposition we evaluated that TSI and CO2 have similar contributions to secular temperature variability between 1425 and 1850 AD. They generate a temperature minimum comparable to the Little Ice Age shown by the temperature reconstructions. Solar forcing explains ~80% of the NH temperature variability during the first part of the millennium (1000–1425 AD) including the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA). It is responsible for a warm period which occurs two centuries later than in the reconstructions. This mismatch implies that the secular variability during the MCA is not fully explained by the response of the model to the TSI reconstruction. With a signal-noise ratio (SNR) estimate we found that the temperature signal of the forced simulation is significantly different from internal variability over area wider than ~5.106 km2, i.e. approximately the extent of Europe. Orbital forcing plays a significant role in latitudes higher than 65° N in summer and supports the conclusions of a recent study on an Arctic temperature reconstruction over past two millennia. The forced variability represents at least half of the temperature signal on only ~30% of the surface of the globe. The study of the SNR and local impacts of the forcings suggests that individual temperature reconstructions taken from random location around the Globe are potentially weakly affected by a linear response to external forcings.

scholarly journals 1200 years of warm-season temperature variability in central Fennoscandia inferred from tree-ring density

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 489-519 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Zhang ◽  
H. W. Linderholm ◽  
B. E. Gunnarson ◽  
J. Björklund ◽  
D. Chen
Keyword(s):  
Tree Ring ◽  
Warm Season ◽  
Local Environment ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Systematic Bias ◽  
Large Area ◽  
Pine Tree ◽  
Northern Fennoscandia ◽  
Cooling Trend

Abstract. An improved and extended Pinus sylvestris L. (Scots Pine) tree-ring maximum density (MXD) chronology from the central Scandinavian Mountains was used to reconstruct warm-season (April–September) temperature back to 850 CE. Due to systematic bias from differences in elevation (or local environment) of the samples through time, the data was "mean adjusted''. The new reconstruction, called C-Scan, was based on the RSFi standardisation method to preserve mid- and long-term climate variability. C-Scan, explaining more than 50% of the warm-season temperature variance in a large area of Central Fennoscandia, agrees with the general profile of Northern Hemisphere temperature evolution during the last 12 centuries, supporting the occurrences of a Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA) around 1009–1108 CE and a Little Ice Age (LIA) ca 1550–1900 CE in Central Fennoscandia. C-scan suggests a later onset of LIA and a larger cooling trend during 1000–1900 CE than previous MXD based reconstructions from Northern Fennoscandia. Moreover, during the last 1200 years, the coldest period was found in the late 17th–19th centuries with the coldest decades being centered on 1600 CE, and the warmest 100 years occurring in the most recent century.

scholarly journals A 368-year maximum temperature reconstruction based on tree-ring data in the northwestern Sichuan Plateau (NWSP), China

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 1485-1498 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liangjun Zhu ◽  
Yuandong Zhang ◽  
Zongshan Li ◽  
Binde Guo ◽  
Xiaochun Wang
Keyword(s):  
Tree Ring ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Temperature Reconstruction ◽  
Temperature Variability ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Maximum Temperature ◽  
Tree Ring Data ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Extreme Cold ◽  
The 19Th Century

Abstract. We present a reconstruction of July–August mean maximum temperature variability based on a chronology of tree-ring widths over the period AD 1646–2013 in the northern part of the northwestern Sichuan Plateau (NWSP), China. A regression model explains 37.1 % of the variance of July–August mean maximum temperature during the calibration period from 1954 to 2012. Compared with nearby temperature reconstructions and gridded land surface temperature data, our temperature reconstruction had high spatial representativeness. Seven major cold periods were identified (1708–1711, 1765–1769, 1818–1821, 1824–1828, 1832–1836, 1839–1842, and 1869–1877), and three major warm periods occurred in 1655–1668, 1719–1730, and 1858–1859 from this reconstruction. The typical Little Ice Age climate can also be well represented in our reconstruction and clearly ended with climatic amelioration at the late of the 19th century. The 17th and 19th centuries were cold with more extreme cold years, while the 18th and 20th centuries were warm with less extreme cold years. Moreover, the 20th century rapid warming was not obvious in the NWSP mean maximum temperature reconstruction, which implied that mean maximum temperature might play an important and different role in global change as unique temperature indicators. Multi-taper method (MTM) spectral analysis revealed significant periodicities of 170-, 49–114-, 25–32-, 5.7-, 4.6–4.7-, 3.0–3.1-, 2.5-, and 2.1–2.3-year quasi-cycles at a 95 % confidence level in our reconstruction. Overall, the mean maximum temperature variability in the NWSP may be associated with global land–sea atmospheric circulation (e.g., ENSO, PDO, or AMO) as well as solar and volcanic forcing.

scholarly journals Millennium-long summer temperature variations in the European Alps as reconstructed from tree rings

2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-400 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Corona ◽  
J. Guiot ◽  
J. L. Edouard ◽  
F. Chalié ◽  
U. Büntgen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Tree Ring ◽  
Regional Growth ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Warming Trend ◽  
High Elevation ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
European Alps ◽  
Linear Calibration ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Short Tree

Abstract. This paper presents a reconstruction of the summer temperatures over the Greater Alpine Region (44.05°–47.41° N, 6.43°–13° E) during the last millennium based on a network of 38 multi-centennial larch and stone pine chronologies. Tree ring series are standardized using an Adaptative Regional Growth Curve, which attempts to remove the age effect from the low frequency variations in the series. The proxies are calibrated using the June to August mean temperatures from the HISTALP high-elevation temperature time series spanning the 1818–2003. The method combines an analogue technique, which is able to extend the too short tree-ring series, an artificial neural network technique for an optimal non-linear calibration including a bootstrap technique for calculating error assessment on the reconstruction. About 50% of the temperature variance is reconstructed. Low-elevation instrumental data back to 1760 compared to their instrumental target data reveal divergence between (warmer) early instrumental measurements and (colder) proxy estimates. The proxy record indicates cool conditions, from the mid-11th century to the mid-12th century, related to the Oort solar minimum followed by a short Medieval Warm Period (1200–1420). The Little Ice Age (1420–1830) appears particularly cold between 1420 and 1820 with summers that are 0.8 °C cooler than the 1901–2000 period. The new record suggests that the persistency of the late 20th century warming trend is unprecedented. It also reveals significant similarities with other alpine reconstructions.

Reconstruction of the Extratropical NH Mean Temperature over the Last Millennium with a Method that Preserves Low-Frequency Variability

2011 ◽  
Vol 24 (23) ◽  
pp. 6013-6034 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bo Christiansen ◽  
Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist
Keyword(s):  
Low Frequency ◽  
Temperature Reconstruction ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Last Millennium ◽  
Screening Process ◽  
Calibration Period ◽  
Mean Temperature ◽  
Reconstruction Methods ◽  
Low Frequency Variability ◽  
In The Beginning

Abstract A new multiproxy reconstruction of the Northern Hemisphere extratropical mean temperature over the last millennium is presented. The reconstruction is performed with a novel method designed to avoid the underestimation of low-frequency variability that has been a general problem for regression-based reconstruction methods. The disadvantage of this method is an exaggerated high-frequency variability. The reconstruction is based on a set of 40 proxies of annual to decadal resolution that have been shown to relate to the local temperature. The new reconstruction shows a very cold Little Ice Age centered around the 17th century with a cold extremum (for 50-yr smoothing) of about 1.1 K below the temperature of the calibration period, AD 1880–1960. This cooling is about twice as large as corresponding numbers reported by most other reconstructions. In the beginning of the millennium the new reconstruction shows small anomalies in agreement with previous studies. However, the new temperature reconstruction decreases faster than previous reconstructions in the first 600 years of the millennium and has a stronger variability. The salient features of the new reconstruction are shown to be robust to changes in the calibration period, the source of the local temperatures, the spatial averaging procedure, and the screening process applied to the proxies. An ensemble pseudoproxy approach is applied to estimate the confidence intervals of the 50-yr smoothed reconstruction showing that the period AD 1500–1850 is significantly colder than the calibration period.

scholarly journals Blue intensity and density from northern Fennoscandian tree rings, exploring the potential to improve summer temperature reconstructions with earlywood information

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 877-885 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. Björklund ◽  
B. E. Gunnarson ◽  
K. Seftigen ◽  
J. Esper ◽  
H. W. Linderholm
Keyword(s):  
Tree Ring ◽  
Wood Density ◽  
Lignin Content ◽  
Warm Season ◽  
Summer Temperature ◽  
Latewood Density ◽  
Radiographic Measurements ◽  
Temperature Reconstructions ◽  
June July ◽  
Blue Intensity

Abstract. Here we explore two new tree-ring parameters, derived from measurements of wood density and blue intensity (BI). The new proxies show an increase in the interannual summer temperature signal compared to established proxies, and present the potential to improve long-term performance. At high latitudes, where tree growth is mainly limited by low temperatures, radiodensitometric measurements of wood density, specifically maximum latewood density (MXD), provides a temperature proxy that is superior to that of tree-ring widths. The high cost of developing MXD has led to experimentation with a less expensive method using optical flatbed scanners to produce a new proxy, herein referred to as maximum latewood blue absorption intensity (abbreviated MXBI). MXBI is shown to be very similar to MXD on annual timescales but less accurate on centennial timescales. This is due to the fact that extractives, such as resin, stain the wood differentially from tree to tree and from heartwood to sapwood. To overcome this problem, and to address similar potential problems in radiodensitometric measurements, the new parameters Δblue intensity (ΔBI) and Δdensity are designed by subtracting the ambient BI/density in the earlywood, as a background value, from the latewood measurements. As a case-study, based on Scots pine trees from Northern Sweden, we show that Δdensity can be used as a quality control of MXD values and that the reconstructive performance of warm-season mean temperatures is more focused towards the summer months (JJA – June, July, August), with an increase by roughly 20% when also utilising the interannual information from the earlywood. However, even though the new parameter ΔBI experiences an improvement as well, there are still puzzling dissimilarities between Δdensity and ΔBI on multicentennial timescales. As a consequence, temperature reconstructions based on ΔBI will presently only be able to resolve information on decadal-to-centennial timescales. The possibility of trying to calibrate BI into a measure of lignin content or density, similarly to how radiographic measurements are calibrated into density, could be a solution. If this works, only then can ΔBI be used as a reliable proxy in multicentennial-scale climate reconstructions.

scholarly journals Temperature variability of the Iberian Range since 1602 inferred from tree-ring records

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Tejedor ◽  
M. A. Saz ◽  
J. M. Cuadrat ◽  
J. Esper ◽  
M. de Luis
Keyword(s):  
Tree Ring ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Ring Width ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Basal Area ◽  
Volcanic Eruptions ◽  
Temperature Variability ◽  
Iberian Range ◽  
Cambial Age ◽  
Low Frequency Variability

Abstract. Tree-rings are an important proxy to understand the natural drivers of climate variability in the Mediterranean basin and hence to improve future climate scenarios in a vulnerable region. Here, we compile 316 tree-ring width series from 11 conifer sites in the western Iberian Range. We apply a new standardization method based on the trunk basal area instead of the tree cambial age to develop a regional chronology which preserves high to low frequency variability. A new reconstruction for the 1602–2012 period correlates at −0.78 with observational September temperatures with a cumulative mean of the 21 previous months over the 1945–2012 calibration period. The new IR2Tmax reconstruction is spatially representative for the Iberian Peninsula and captures the full range of past Iberian Range temperature variability. Reconstructed long-term temperature variations match reasonably well with solar irradiance changes since warm and cold phases correspond with high and low solar activity, respectively. In addition, some annual temperatures downturns coincide with volcanic eruptions with a three year lag.

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