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…
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…
Spatio‐temporal patterns of tree growth as related to carbon isotope fractionation in European forests under changing climate
Aim The aim was to decipher Europe‐wide spatio‐temporal patterns of forest growth dynamics and their associations with carbon isotope fractionation processes inferred from tree rings as modulated by climate warming. Location Europe and North Africa (30‒70° N, 10° W‒35° E). Time period 1901‒2003. Major taxa studied Temperate and Euro‐Siberian trees. Methods We characterize changes in the relationship between tree growth and carbon isotope fractionation over the 20th century using a European network consisting of 20 site chronologies. Using indexed tree‐ring widths (TRWi), we assess shifts in the temporal coherence of radial growth across sites (synchrony) for five forest ecosystems (Atlantic…
Water-use efficiency and transpiration across European forests during the Anthropocene
Considering the combined effects of CO2 fertilization and climate change drivers on plant physiology leads to a modest increase in simulated European forest transpiration in spite of the effects of CO2-induced stomatal closure. The Earth’s carbon and hydrologic cycles are intimately coupled by gas exchange through plant stomata1,2,3. However, uncertainties in the magnitude4,5,6 and consequences7,8 of the physiological responses9,10 of plants to elevated CO2 in natural environments hinders modelling of terrestrial water cycling and carbon storage11. Here we use annually resolved long-term δ13C tree-ring measurements across a European forest network to reconstruct the physiologically driven r…
Placing unprecedented recent fir growth in a European-wide and Holocene-long context
7 páginas.- Büntgen, U.
Climate Sensitivity and Parameter Coherency in Annually Resolved δ13C and δ18O from Pinus uncinata Tree-Ring Data in the Spanish Pyrenees
We explore the 20th century climate sensitivity of annually resolved carbon and oxygen isotope ratios in five Pinus uncinata individuals from the upper treeline in similar to 2400 m asl of the Span ...
Stable carbon isotope ratios of tree-ring cellulose from the site network of the EU-Project ‘ISONET’
The ISONET project has been striving to improve greatly our understanding of European climate systems providing independent quantitative data for model verification and policy making. A network of 24 sites provides dendrochronological coverage from Iberia to Fennoscandia, Caledonia and the Tyrol. The stable isotope (C, H, O) ratios of these annually resolved time series shall be analysed within this project, to reconstruct past climate regimes (temperature, relative humidity and precipitation characteristics) for the last 400 years. Climate variability shall be addressed on three timescales; decade-century (source water/air mass dominance); inter-annual (quantifying baseline variability, ex…
Stable oxygen isotope ratios of tree-ring cellulose from the site network of the EU-Project ‘ISONET’
24 European annually resolved stable isotope chronologies have been constructed from tree ring cellulose for the last 400 years (1600CE – 2003CE) for carbon and oxygen and for the last 100 years for hydrogen. Data was produced within the ISONET project (400 Years of Annual Reconstructions of European Climate Variability Using a Highly Resolved Isotopic Network,) to initiate an extensive spatiotemporal tree-ring stable isotope network across Europe funded as part of the fifth EC Framework Programme “Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development”. This data set comprises the ISONET δ18O records.