Richard Smith’s new paper doesn’t mention Graybill bristlecones, but once again, his paper does nothing more than discover what we already knew – that Graybill bristlecones have a HS shape. In the process, Smith amusingly discovers a “divergence” problem with lake sediments Smith’s new paper describes the use of the methodology of his earlier paper […]
CA readers know that virtually all of the “independent” IPCC reconstructions purporting to compare modern and MWP temperatures use Graybill strip bark chronologies and/or Yamal. In various posts, problems with strip bark chronologies have been discussed, including discussion of Pete Holzmann’s observation based on our sampling at Almagre that strip bark trees seemed to show […]
While we’re re-visiting bristlecones and foxtails, the Here are three interesting online articles, each of which discusses areas in the Sierra Nevada CA, which are now submerged, but where forests grew in the Medieval Warm Period. Many readers of this blog will have read articles about trees being disgorged from receding glaciers and it’s hard […]
The relationship of bristlecone/foxtails to gridcell temperature is something that I’ve discussed at length, but, surprisingly, I’ve never illustrated it at the blog. This is a type of relationship that, in some ways, is well suited to blogs. It’s simple to discuss; it’s important. It would be amply illustrated and discussed in business feasibility studies […]
Von Storch and Mann have both said that, in an MBH98-type reconstruction, it is impossible to allocate the impact of individual proxies. This is incorrect as we pointed out in MM05b. My posts on MBH98 Linear Algebra showed this more clearly (or at least in more detail). However, those posts only took the analysis back […]
Bunn et al. [2005] have an interesting discussion of 20th century tree growth (especially foxtail pines) in the Sierra Nevada and White Mountains, in the current Holocene, which, needless to say, was interesting to me. The extraordinary and uncritical embedding of MBH98-99 in paleoclimate mentality recurs here in a curious way. Roger Pielke wondered whether […]
Here’s a beautiful picture of a foxtail pine from the MWP, illustrating eloquently the change in treelines: Original Caption: A dead trunk above current treeline from a foxtail pine that lived about 1000 years ago near Bighorn Plateau in Sequoia National Park.
I have some odds and ends in inventory about bristlecone and foxtail sites, which I’m going to post up, mostly because I find the information rather interesting. Most dendrochronologists assume that the bristlecone/foxtail sites are far too remote to have experienced direct human effects. As far as I’m concerned, this is an assumption that needs […]
Mann has recently provided some inaccurate information on his treatment of bristlecone pines.
Millar, Constance, Robert Westfall, Diane Delany, John King and Harry Alden, Climate As An Ecosystem Architect; Responses Of High-Elevation Conifers To Past Climate Variability.
