A 1052-year tree-ring proxy for Alpine summer temperatures |
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| Authors: | Ulf Büntgen Jan Esper David C Frank Kurt Nicolussi Martin Schmidhalter |
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| Institution: | (1) Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, Zürcherstrasse 111, 8903 Birmensdorf, Switzerland;(2) Institute for High Mountain Research, Innrain 52, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria;(3) Dendrolabor Valais, Sennereigasse 1, 3900 Brig, Switzerland |
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| Abstract: | A June–August Alpine temperature proxy series is developed back to AD 951 using 1,527 ring-width measurements from living trees and relict wood. The reconstruction is composed of larch data from
four Alpine valleys in Switzerland and pine data from the western Austrian Alps. These regions are situated in high elevation
Alpine environments where a spatially homogenous summer temperature signal exists. In an attempt to capture the full frequency
range of summer temperatures over the past millennium, from inter-annual to multi-centennial scales, the regional curve standardization
technique is applied to the ring width measurements. Correlations of 0.65 and 0.86 after decadal smoothing, with high elevation
meteorological stations since 1864 indicate an optimal response of the RCS chronology to June–August mean temperatures. The
proxy record reveals warm conditions from before AD 1000 into the thirteenth century, followed by a prolonged cool period, reaching minimum values in the 1820s, and a warming
trend into the twentieth century. This latter trend and the higher frequency variations compare well with the actual high
elevation temperature record. The new central Alpine proxy suggests that summer temperatures during the last decade are unprecedented
over the past millennium. It also reveals significant similarities at inter-decadal to multi-centennial frequencies with large-scale
temperature reconstructions, however, deviating during certain periods from H.H. Lamb‘s European/North Atlantic temperature
history. |
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