New tree-ring evidence for the Late Glacial period from the northern pre-Alps in eastern Switzerland
Abstract The rate and magnitude of temperature variability at the transition from the Last Glacial Maximum into the early Holocene represents a natural analog to current and predicted climate change. A limited number of high-resolution proxy archives, however, challenges our understanding of environmental conditions during this period. Here, we present combined dendrochronological and radiocarbon evidence from 253 newly discovered subfossil pine stumps from Zurich, Switzerland. The individual trees reveal ages of 41–506 years and were growing between the Allerod and Preboreal (∼13′900–11′300 cal BP). Together with previously collected pines from this region, this world's best preserved Late…
Multi-archive summer temperature reconstruction for the European Alps, AD 1053–1996
We present a multi-archive, multi-proxy summer temperature reconstruction for the European Alps covering the period AD 1053e1996 using tree-ring and lake sediment data. The new reconstruction is based on nine different calibration approaches and errors were estimated conservatively. Summer temperatures of the last millennium are characterised by two warm (AD 1053e1171 and 1823e1996) and two cold phases (AD 1172e1379 and 1573e1822). Highest pre-industrial summer temperatures of the 12th century were 0.3 � C warmer than the 20th century mean but 0.35 � C colder than proxy derived
Illuminating Intcal During the Younger Dryas
As the worldwide standard for radiocarbon (14C) dating over the past ca. 50,000 years, the International Calibration Curve (IntCal) is continuously improving towards higher resolution and replication. Tree-ring-based 14C measurements provide absolute dating throughout most of the Holocene, although high-precision data are limited for the Younger Dryas interval and farther back in time. Here, we describe the dendrochronological characteristics of 1448 new 14C dates, between ~11,950 and 13,160 cal BP, from 13 pines that were growing in Switzerland. Significantly enhancing the ongoing IntCal update (IntCal20), this Late Glacial (LG) compilation contains more annually precise 14C dates than any…