New Tree-Ring Evidence from the Pyrenees Reveals Western Mediterranean Climate Variability since Medieval Times

2017

Paleoclimatic evidence is necessary to place the current warming and drying of the western Mediterranean basin in a long-term perspective of natural climate variability. Annually resolved and absolutely dated temperature proxies south of the European Alps that extend back into medieval times are, however, mainly limited to measurements of maximum latewood density (MXD) from high-elevation conifers. Here, the authors present the world’s best replicated MXD site chronology of 414 living and relict Pinus uncinata trees found >2200 m above mean sea level (MSL) in the Spanish central Pyrenees. This composite record correlates significantly ( p ≤ 0.01) with May–June and August–September mean …

Pont-sur-Seine - La Villeneuve-au-Châtelot. Deux enceintes néolithiques à Pont-sur-Seine et La Villeneuve-au-Châtelot. Structuration territoriale de …

2021

International audience

Louviers (Eure) au haut Moyen Age, découvertes anciennes et fouilles récentes du cimetière de la rue du Mûrier

2008

Cooling and societal change during the Late Antique Little Ice Age from 536 to around 660 AD

2016

Societal upheaval occurred across Eurasia in the sixth and seventh centuries. Tree-ring reconstructions suggest a period of pronounced cooling during this time associated with several volcanic eruptions. Climatic changes during the first half of the Common Era have been suggested to play a role in societal reorganizations in Europe1,2 and Asia3,4. In particular, the sixth century coincides with rising and falling civilizations1,2,3,4,5,6, pandemics7,8, human migration and political turmoil8,9,10,11,12,13. Our understanding of the magnitude and spatial extent as well as the possible causes and concurrences of climate change during this period is, however, still limited. Here we use tree-ring…

New tree-ring evidence for the Late Glacial period from the northern pre-Alps in eastern Switzerland

2018

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…

Old World Megadroughts and Pluvials During the Common Era

2015

An atlas of megadroughts in Europe and in the Mediterranean Basin during the Common Era provides insights into climate variability.

Timber Logging in Central Siberia is the Main Source for Recent Arctic Driftwood

2015

Abstract Recent findings indicated spruce from North America and larch from eastern Siberia to be the dominating tree species of Arctic driftwood throughout the Holocene. However, changes in source region forest and river characteristics, as well as ocean current dynamics and sea ice extent likely influence its spatiotemporal composition. Here, we present 2556 driftwood samples from Greenland, Iceland, Svalbard, and the Faroe Islands. A total of 498 out of 969 Pinus sylvestris ring width series were cross-dated at the catchment level against a network of Eurasian boreal reference chronologies. The central Siberian Yenisei and Angara Rivers account for 91% of all dated pines, with their oute…

Saint-Dizier « la Tuilerie » (Haute-Marne) : trois sépultures d’élite du VIe siècle

2019

In 2002, excavations carried out by Marie-Cécile Truc (Inrap) at Saint-Dizier led to the discovery of four graves of exceptional wealth, containing a young woman, two men and a horse, dated to c. 525-550 AD. Dressed and adorned with numerous jewels, the young female was laid in a coffin upon which were placed vessels in glass, copper alloy goblet and ceramic. Each male had been buried in an excavated funerary chamber, built within an oak frame. They were laid in their coffins along with their personal clothing, including a ceremonial sword with two rings added to the pommel. The larger weapons (throwing axes, shields, lances and angons) as well as various utensils were placed either on the …

Illuminating Intcal During the Younger Dryas

2020

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…

Tree-Ring Amplification of the Early Nineteenth-Century Summer Cooling in Central Europe

2015

Abstract Annually resolved and absolutely dated tree-ring chronologies are the most important proxy archives to reconstruct climate variability over centuries to millennia. However, the suitability of tree-ring chronologies to reflect the “true” spectral properties of past changes in temperature and hydroclimate has recently been debated. At issue is the accurate quantification of temperature differences between early nineteenth-century cooling and recent warming. In this regard, central Europe (CEU) offers the unique opportunity to compare evidence from instrumental measurements, paleomodel simulations, and proxy reconstructions covering both the exceptionally hot summer of 2003 and the ye…

Reply to 'Limited Late Antique cooling'

2017

Regional coherency of boreal forest growth defines Arctic driftwood provenancing

2016

Arctic driftwood represents a unique proxy archive at the interface of marine and terrestrial environments. Combined wood anatomical and dendrochronological analyses have been used to detect the origin of driftwood and may allow past timber floating activities, as well as past sea ice and ocean current dynamics to be reconstructed. However, the success of driftwood provenancing studies depends on the length, number, and quality of circumpolar boreal reference chronologies. Here, we introduce a Eurasian-wide high-latitude network of 286 ring width chronologies from the International Tree Ring Data Bank (ITRDB) and 160 additional sites comprising the three main boreal conifers Pinus, Larix, a…

Filling the Eastern European gap in millennium-long temperature reconstructions

2013

Tree ring–based temperature reconstructions form the scientific backbone of the current global change debate. Although some European records extend into medieval times, high-resolution, long-term, regional-scale paleoclimatic evidence is missing for the eastern part of the continent. Here we compile 545 samples of living trees and historical timbers from the greater Tatra region to reconstruct interannual to centennial-long variations in Eastern European May–June temperature back to 1040 AD. Recent anthropogenic warming exceeds the range of past natural climate variability. Increased plague outbreaks and political conflicts, as well as decreased settlement activities, coincided with tempera…

Les structures artisanales de la villa de Grigy (Moselle) : apport de l’analyse morphologique des équipements et de l’étude du mobilier métallique à …

2017

International audience

Digitizing Historical Plague

2017

Placing unprecedented recent fir growth in a European-wide and Holocene-long context

2014

7 páginas.- Büntgen, U.

Relations sociétés - milieux en Petite-Seine du Mésolithique à la fin du Moyen Âge : nouvelles problématiques et résultats récents d’archéologie envi…

2020

International audience

Diverse growth trends and climate responses across Eurasia’s boreal forest

2016

The area covered by boreal forests accounts for similar to 16% of the global and 22% of the Northern Hemisphere landmass. Changes in the productivity and functioning of this circumpolar biome not o ...

2500 Years of European Climate Variability and Human Susceptibility

2011

Climate variations influenced the agricultural productivity, health risk, and conflict level of preindustrial societies. Discrimination between environmental and anthropogenic impacts on past civilizations, however, remains difficult because of the paucity of high-resolution paleoclimatic evidence. We present tree ring-based reconstructions of central European summer precipitation and temperature variability over the past 2500 years. Recent warming is unprecedented, but modern hydroclimatic variations may have at times been exceeded in magnitude and duration. Wet and warm summers occurred during periods of Roman and medieval prosperity. Increased climate variability from similar to 250 to 6…

Relations entre sociétés et environnement en Petite Seine du Mésolithique à la fin du Moyen Âge : nouvelles problématiques et résultats récents d’arc…

2021

Actes du colloque Arkéaube; International audience; This jointly authored paper encompasses several contributions which highlight new issues in environmental archaeology and incorporate palaeo-environmental data from preventiveexcavations. More specifically, it broaches three questions:-The evolution of the environment from the Late Glacial to the present day is analysed using faunal remains (malacofaunae—molluscs, etc.) and botanicalremains (pine trunks) preserved in the alluvial deposits of the river Seine;-Riverside occupations based on reconstructions of the hydrography and hydrographic functioning of the channels documented in the Pont-sur-Seine sector and in Bassée;-The marshes assume…

Extraterrestrial confirmation of tree-ring dating

2014