Tree rings are widely used for reconstructing climate and past climates are critical for putting the current climate (including global temperatures) into the proper perspective. Is current warming unusual? Only a comparison to the past can tell. To help gain a better understanding of the past and how global temperatures may have behaved, researchers frequently […]
(2012 Update…) CA was the first blog to discuss the recent papers by Wilmking and his associates on “positive and negative responders” – the opposite response of trees to recent warming in which – at the same site – some trees responded positively and some negatively. This is an important observation in trying to provide […]
bender has sent in the following interesting graphic showing how drought-caused dieback could bias a tree ring chronology and interfere with interpretation of past records, emphasizing the continued need to keep U-shaped temperature response functions firmly in one’s mind when considering these series. [image being re-sized] (2012 note) For reference, here are some related postings […]
New poster bender has written some very thoughtful posts, including some comments on Gaspé which I I’d like to recover from deep in a political thread. The growth pulse in Gaspé cedars seemed very improbable to me as a temperature proxy; bender has some detailed knowledge on the topic.
David Stockwell has suggested a discussion of nonlinear responses of tree growth to temperature. I’ve summarized here some observations which I’ve seen about bristlecones, limber pine, cedars and spruce – all showing an upside-down U-shaped response to temperature. The implications of this type of relationship for the multiproxy project of attempting to reconstruct past temperatures […]
I get a lot of questions about post-1980 proxies and I find it a very interesting question. One would expect that 1998 – the "warmest" year of the millennium – and the 1990s – the "warmest decade" of the millennium would leave a loud signal in a valid proxy. I’m going to start discussing some […]
Climate Audit 