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The original version of this Article contained an error in the Data Availability section, which incorrectly read ‘All data will be freely available via https://www.ams.ethz.ch/research.html.’ The correct version states ‘http://www.ams.ethz.ch/research/published-data.html’ in place of ‘https://www.ams.ethz.ch/research.html’. This has been corrected in both the PDF and HTML versions of the Article.

Practical issues arise when applying a statistical framework for unbiased ranking of alternative forced climate model simulations by comparison with climate observations from instrumental and proxy data (Part 1 in this series). Given a set of model and observational data, several decisions need to be made; e.g. concerning the region that each proxy series represents, the weighting of different regions, and the time resolution to use in the analysis. Objective selection criteria cannot be made here, but we argue to study how sensitive the results are to the choices made. The framework is improved by the relaxation of two assumptions; to allow autocorrelation in the statistical model for simulated climate variability, and to enable direct comparison of alternative simulations to test if any of them fit the observations significantly better. The extended framework is applied to a set of simulations driven with forcings for the pre-industrial period 1000–1849 CE and fifteen tree-ring based temperature proxy series. Simulations run with only one external forcing (land-use, volcanic, small-amplitude solar, or large-amplitude solar), do not significantly capture the variability in the tree-ring data – although the simulation with volcanic forcing does so for some experiment settings. When all forcings are combined (using either the small- or large-amplitude solar forcing) including also orbital, greenhouse-gas and non-volcanic aerosol forcing, and additionally used to produce small simulation ensembles starting from slightly different initial ocean conditions, the resulting simulations are highly capable of capturing some observed variability. Nevertheless, for some choices in the experiment design, they are not significantly closer to the observations than when unforced simulations are used, due to highly variable results between regions. It is also not possible to tell whether the small-amplitude or large-amplitude solar forcing causes the multiple-forcing simulations to be closer to the reconstructed temperature variability. This suggests that proxy data from more regions and proxy types, or representing larger regions and other seasons, are needed for more conclusive results from model-data comparisons in the last millennium.

Growth of old trees in cold-limited forests may benefit from recent climate warming and rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations (ca) if age-related constraints do not impair wood formation. To test this hypothesis, we studied old Mountain pine trees at three Pyrenean high-elevation forests subjected to cold-wet (ORD, AIG) or warmer-drier (PED) conditions. We analyzed long-term trends (1450–2008) in growth (BAI, basal area increment), maximum (MXD) and minimum (MID) wood density, and tree-ring carbon (δ13C) and oxygen (δ18O) isotope composition, which were used as proxies for intrinsic water-use efficiency (iWUE) and stomatal conductance (gs), respectively. Old pines showed positive (AIG and ORD) or stable (PED) growth trends during the industrial period (since 1850) despite being older than 400 years. Growth and wood density covaried from 1850 onwards. In the cold-wet sites (AIG and ORD) enhanced photosynthesis through rising ca was likely responsible for the post-1850 iWUE improvement. However, uncoupling between BAI and iWUE indicated that increases in iWUE were not responsible for the higher growth but climate warming. A reduction in gs was inferred from increased δ18O for PED trees from 1960 onwards, the warmest site where the highest iWUE increase occurred (34%). This suggests that an emergent drought stress at warm-dry sites could trigger stomatal closure to avoid excessive transpiration. Overall, carbon acquisition as lasting woody pools is expected to be maintained in aged trees from cold and high-elevation sites where old forests constitute unique long-term carbon reservoirs. We are very grateful to several projects financed by “Organismo Autónomo de Parques Nacionales” (projects 12/2008 387/2011). E.G. was funded by a Juan de la Cierva post-doctoral research contract (FJCI-2014-19615, MEC, Spain). Spanish (AMB95-0160, CGL2011-26654) and EU projects ISONET (contract EV K2-2001-00237) and MILLENNIUM (017008–2) also supported this study by contributing additional datasets.

The increasing carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration in the atmosphere in combination with climatic changes throughout the last century are likely to have had a profound effect on the physiology of trees: altering the carbon and water fluxes passing through the stomatal pores. However, the magnitude and spatial patterns of such changes in natural forests remain highly uncertain. Here, stable carbon isotope ratios from a network of 35 tree-ring sites located across Europe are investigated to determine the intrinsic water-use efficiency (iWUE), the ratio of photosynthesis to stomatal conductance from 19012000. The results were compared with simulations of a dynamic vegetation model (LPX-Bern 1.0) that integrates numerous ecosystem and landatmosphere exchange processes in a theoretical framework. The spatial pattern of tree-ring derived iWUE of the investigated coniferous and deciduous species and the model results agreed significantly with a clear south-to-north gradient, as well as a general increase in iWUE over the 20th century. The magnitude of the iWUE increase was not spatially uniform, with the strongest increase observed and modelled for temperate forests in Central Europe, a region where summer soil-water availability decreased over the last century. We were able to demonstrate that the combined effects of increasing CO2 and climate change leading to soil drying have resulted in an accelerated increase of iWUE. These findings will help to reduce uncertainties in the land surface schemes of global climate models, where vegetationclimate feedbacks are currently still poorly constrained by observational data.

[1] Exactly dated tree-ring measurements such as ring width (TRW) and maximum latewood density (MXD), which are sensitive to summer temperatures, can provide possible routes to investigate the occurrence of hemispheric-wide cool summers that might be linked to explosive tropical volcanic eruptions. These measurements can provide much longer records than the instrumental period, enabling much longer periods to be assessed and offers the potential to look at much larger eruptions than recorded over the last 200 years. This paper looks at TRW evidence from Northern Fennoscandia extending over the last 7500 years, using two independently produced chronologies from northern Sweden and northern Finland. TRW is less responsive than MXD to cool summer temperatures, but MXD is only available for the last 2000 years. Additionally, looking at a relatively small location, compared to the Northern Hemisphere average, adds considerable noise. Progress in this area is likely to be made by developing more millennial-long TRW series across northern high latitudes or being able to develop MXD series from the sub-fossil material, which comprises most of the samples prior to the last 1000 years. The three most extreme negative values for the region for the last 2000 years are 1601, 542, and 1837, although the latter is not extreme in a long instrumental record for the region. The most extreme year of all occurred in 330BC. Of the 20 most extreme negative years, nine occurred during the AD years with the remaining 11 occurring during the prior 5500 years.

This paper presents results from the first 1100 years of a long stable carbon isotope chronology currently in development from Scots Pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) trees growing in the Tornetrask region of northern Sweden. The isotope record currently comprises a total of 74 trees with a mean annual replication of >12, thereby enabling it to be compared directly with other tree-ring based palaeoclimate reconstructions from this region. In developing the reconstruction, several key topics in isotope dendroclimatology (chronology construction, replication, CO2 adjustment and age trends) were addressed. The resulting carbon isotope series is calibrated against instrumental data from the closest meteorological station at Abisko (AD1913-2008) to provide a record of June August sunshine for northern Fennoscandia. This parameter is closely linked to the direct control of assimilation rate; Photosynthetically Active Radiation (PAR) and the indirect measures; mean July August temperature and percent cloud cover. The coupled response of summer sunshine and temperature in this region permits a multiparameter comparison with a local reconstruction of past temperature variability based upon tree growth proxies to explore the stability of this coupling through time. Several periods are identified where the temperature (X-ray density) and sunshine (stable carbon isotope ratio) records diverge. The most significant and sustained of these occur between c AD1200-1380 and c AD1550-1780, providing evidence for a cool, sunny, two-phase Little Ice Age. Whilst summer sunshine reconstructed for the 20th century is significantly different from the mean of the last 1100 years (P 0.01), so it is the 17th-18th, and to a lesser extent, the 13th centuries rather than the early medival period that appear anomalous when viewed within the context of the last 1100 years. The observed departures between temperature and sunshine are interpreted as indicating a change in large-scale circulation associated with a southward migration of the Polar Front. Such a change, affecting the Northern Annular Mode (Arctic Oscillation) would result in more stable anticyclonic conditions (cool, bright, summers) over northern Fennoscandia, thus providing a testable mechanism for the development of a multi-phase, time-transgressive Little Ice Age across Europe.

We describe the analysis of existing and new maximum-latewood-density (MXD) and tree-ring width (TRW) data from the Torneträsk region of northern Sweden and the construction of 1500 year chronologies. Some previous work found that MXD and TRW chronologies from Torneträsk were inconsistent over the most recent 200 years, even though they both reflect predominantly summer temperature influences on tree growth. We show that this was partly a result of systematic bias in MXD data measurements and partly a result of inhomogeneous sample selection from living trees (modern sample bias). We use refinements of the simple Regional Curve Standardisation (RCS) method of chronology construction to identify and mitigate these biases. The new MXD and TRW chronologies now present a largely consistent picture of long-timescale changes in past summer temperature in this region over their full length, indicating similar levels of summer warmth in the medieval period (MWP, c. ce 900–1100) and the latter half of the 20th century. Future work involving the updating of MXD chronologies using differently sourced measurements may require similar analysis and appropriate adjustment to that described here to make the data suitable for the production of un-biased RCS chronologies. The use of ‘growth-rate’ based multiple RCS curves is recommended to identify and mitigate the problem of ‘modern sample bias’.

Four Nordic temperature proxies based on tree growth at the northern timberline – ring-width from Sweden and Finland, maximum latewood density from Sweden, and height increment from Finland – were compared. Three indexing methods were used to enhance the low (centennial and above), medium (decadal-to-multidecadal) and high (decadal-to-interannual) frequencies. The proxies are shown to have a strong temperature signal (common variance) at the interannual-to-multidecadal scale, while the multidecadal-to-centennial trends are less coherent, perhaps reflecting intra-regional differences in growing conditions but more likely due to the more noisy regional curve standardization method used to retain the longest trends. Various methods of combining the four proxy series were explored and tested by comparison with four long temperature records from northern Fennoscandia. Only relatively high-frequency, spline-indexed series produced consistently positive verification statistics as a reconstruction model for summer temperature using all four proxies. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Minimum blue intensity is a reflected light imaging technique that provides an inexpensive, robust and reliable surrogate for maximum latewood density. In this application it was found that temperature reconstructions from resin-extracted samples of Pinus sylvestris (L.) from Fennoscandia provide results equivalent to conventional x-ray densitometry. This paper describes the implementation of the blue intensity method using commercially available software and a flat-bed scanner. A calibration procedure is presented that permits results obtained by different laboratories, or using different scanners, to be compared. In addition, the use of carefully prepared and chemically treated 10-mm-diameter cores are explored; suggesting that it may not be necessary to produce thin laths with the rings aligned exactly perpendicular to the measurement surface.

Twentieth-century summer (July-August) temperatures in northern Finland are reconstructed using ring widths, maximum density and stable carbon isotope ratios (d 13 C) of Scots pine tree rings, and using combinations of these proxies. Verification is based on the coefficient of determination (r 2 ), reduction of error (RE) and coefficient of efficiency (CE) statistics. Of the individual proxies, d 13 C performs best, followed by maximum density. Combining d 13 C and maximum density strengthens the climate signal but adding ring widths leads to little improvement. Blue intensity, an inexpensive alternative to X-ray densitometry, is shown to perform similarly. Multi-proxy reconstruction of summer temperatures from a single site produces strong correlations with gridded climate data over most of northern Fennoscandia. Since relatively few trees are required (

Fennoscandia has a strong tradition in dendrochronology, and its large tracts of boreal forest make the region well suited for the development of tree-ring chronologies that extend back several thousands of years. Two of the world's longest continuous (most tree-ring chronologies are annually resolved) tree-ring width chronologies are found in northern Fennoscandia, with records from Torneträsk and Finnish Lapland covering the last ca. 7500 yr. In addition, several chronologies between coastal Norway and the interior of Finland extend back several centuries. Tree-ring data from Fennoscandia have provided important information on regional climate variability during the mid to late Holocene and have played major roles in the reconstruction of hemispheric and global temperatures. Tree-ring data from the region have also been used to reconstruct large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns, regional precipitation and drought. Such information is imperative when trying to reach better understanding of natural climate change and variability and its forcing mechanisms, and placing recent climate change within a long-term context.

Spatial and temporal stability of the climatic signal in northern Fennoscandian pine tree ring width and maximum density

Minimum blue intensity measurements of resin-extracted Pinus sylvestris (L.) samples, conducted using a flat-bed scanner and commercially available software, are shown to provide a robust and reliable surrogate for maximum latewood density. Blue intensity data from 15 trees, from three stands, are reported relative to a standard blue-scale in a manner similar to grey-scale calibration in x-ray densitometry. The resulting time series are highly correlated with x-ray densitometry data generated from the same samples and preserve the same high level of signal strength. Sensitivity to summer climate variables is similar to that identified in the relative density record, demonstrating that minimum blue intensity can also be used for the study of climate change. While not a replacement for the powerful range of x-ray densitometry techniques, blue intensity provides an inexpensive and accessible alternative for accessing palaeoclimatic information.

Dendroecology, or the use of ring patterns to assess the age of trees and environmental factors controlling their growth, is a well-developed method in climatologic studies. This method holds great potential as a forensic tool for age dating, contamination assessment, and characterization of releases. Moreover, the method is independent of the physical presence of contamination at the time of sampling because it is focused on the effect rather than the cause. This review is one of the very few articles published to date exploring the forensic applicability of dendroecology. This article is organized in two parts: Part I describes the method principles and proposes a practical procedure for forensic applications; Part II exemplifies and validates the method through six case studies of successful forensic application (related to petroleum products and chlorinated solvent spills).

The growth/climate relationship of theoretically temperature-controlled high-elevation forests has been demonstrated to weaken over recent decades. This is likely due to new tree growth limiting factors, such as an increasing drought risk for ecosystem functioning and productivity across the Mediterranean Basin. In addition, declining tree growth sensitivity to spring temperature may emerge in response to increasing drought stress. Here, we evaluate these ideas by assessing the growth/climate sensitivity of 1500 tree-ring width (TRW) and 102 maximum density (MXD) measurement series from 711 and 74 Pinus uncinata trees, respectively, sampled at 28 high-elevation forest sites across the Pyrenees and two relict populations of the Iberian System. Different dendroclimatological standardization and split period approaches were used to assess the high- to low-frequency behavior of 20th century tree growth in response to temperature means, precipitation totals and drought indices. Long-term variations in TRW track summer temperatures until about 1970 but diverge afterwards, whereas MXD captures the recent temperature increase in the low-frequency domain fairly well. On the other hand summer drought has increasingly driven TRW along the 20th century. Our results suggest fading temperature sensitivity of Iberian high-elevation P. uncinata forest growth, and reveal the importance of summer drought that is becoming the emergent limiting factor of tree ring width formation in many parts of the Mediterranean Basin. © 2014 Elsevier B.V., We thank the personnel of the PNOMP and PNAESM National Parks, A.Q. Alla and G. Sangüesa-Barreda for their help during the sampling and in dendrochronological analyses and also in making Fig. 1. We thank Loïc Schneider (WSL) for his collaboration in making Fig. A14. This study was supported by projects 012⁄2008 and 387⁄2011 (Organismo Autónomo Parques Nacionales, MMAMRM, Spain) and by a JAE-CSIC grant to J.D.G. J.J.C. acknowledges the support of ARAID. We also acknowledge funding by projects, which further contributed to build this data set (FoRmat EUENV4-CT97-0641, CiCyTAMB95-0160). We thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments, which helped us to improve the manuscript.

Tree-ring widths from 880 living, dry dead, and subfossil northern Swedish pines (Pinus syl vestris L.) have been assembled into a continuous and precisely dated chronology (the Torneträsk chronology) covering the period 5407 BC to ad 1997. Biological trends in the data were removed with autoregressive standardization (ARS) to emphasize year-to-year variability, and with regional curve stan dardization (RCS) to emphasize variability on timescales from decades to centuries. The strong association with summer mean temperature (June–August) has enabled the production of a temperature reconstruction for the last 7400 years, providing information on natural summer-temperature variability on timescales from years to centuries. Numerous cold episodes, comparable in severity and duration to the severe summers of the seventeenth century, are shown throughout the last seven millennia. Particularly severe conditions suggested between 600 and 1 BC correspond to a known period of glacier expansion. The relatively warm conditions of the late twentieth century do not exceed those reconstructed for several earlier time intervals, although replication is relatively poor and confidence in the reconstructions is correspondingly reduced in the pre-Christian period, particularly around 3000, 1600 and 330 bc. Despite the use of the RCS approach in chronology construction, the 7400-year chronology does not express the full range of millennial-timescale temperature change in northern Sweden.

Six tree-ring chronologies from Sweden were analyzed to assess if Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) growing on peatlands are useful as annually resolved climate indicators. Also, climate–growth relationships were compared with those of pines growing on nearby dry sites to evaluate if pines from both environments may be combined to yield climate information. While temperatures in spring and summer had positive influences on peatland pine growth, precipitation responses ranged from negative in the north to positive in the south. Climate – growth response patterns differed between peatland and neighboring dry sites, where climatic information in peatland pines was weaker. Added to the direct effect of growth-year climate, is the response of peatland pines to water table variations, a function of climate over several years, likely causing annual growth to reflect a synthesis of climate over a long period. Scots pine climate – growth responses, in both environments, changed throughout the 20th century, corresponding to changes in temperature and precipitation patterns in Sweden. Decreasing growth trends since the late 1970s may be a result of late 20th century change to a warmer and wetter climate, possibly related to a strengthening of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) in recent decades.

International audience; Energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence (EDXRF) provides highly sensitive and precise spatial resolution of cation content in individual annual growth rings in trees. The sensitivity and precision have prompted successful applications to forensic dendrochemistry and the timing of environmental releases of contaminants. These applications have highlighted the need to distinguish dendrochemical effects of internal processes from environmental contamination. Calcium, potassium, and zinc are three marker cations that illustrate the influence of these processes. We found changes in cation chemistry in tree rings potentially due to biomineralization, development of cracks or checks, heartwood/sapwood differentiation, intra-annual processes, and compartmentalization of infection. Distinguishing internal from external processes that affect dendrochemistry will enhance the value of EDXRF for both physiological and forensic investigations.

In this study, wood anatomy, tree-ring width and wood density of Pinus sylvestris at the northern timberline in Fennoscandia were used to identify relationships among the parameters and to screen them for their climatic signals. Furthermore we investigated the influence of the juvenile wood section for all parameters developed. The measurements of wood anatomy were conducted with confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) while the density profiles were produced using an Itrax MultiScanner. We developed chronologies of ring width, wood density and anatomy for a period between 1940 and 2010. Correlations between wood density and wood anatomy were strong in the latewood part. For some wood anatomy and density chronologies youth trends were found in the juvenile part. Wood density decreased from the pith up to the 9th ring and stabilized afterwards, while cell lumen diameter and lumen area increased simultaneously up to the 15th ring. All chronologies contained strong summer temperature signals. The wood anatomical variables provided additional information about seasonal precipitation which could not be found in wood density and tree-ring widths. Our study confirmed previous results stating that the parameter maximum density contains the strongest climate signal, that is, summer temperatures at the northern timberline. Nevertheless, the intra-annual data on tracheid dimensions showed good potential to supply seasonal climatic information and improve our understanding of climatic effects on tree growth and wood formation.

Swedish tree rings provide new evidence in support of a major, widespread environmental disruption in 1628 BC

Sulfur and iron concentrations in wood from three 17(th) century shipwrecks in the Baltic Sea, the Ghost wreck, the Crown and the Sword, were obtained by X-ray fluorescence (XRF) scanning. In near anaerobic environments symbiotic microorganisms degrade waterlogged wood, reduce sulfate and promote accumulation of low-valent sulfur compounds, as previously found for the famous wrecks of the Vasa and Mary Rose. Sulfur K-edge X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) analyses of Ghost wreck wood show that organic thiols and disulfides dominate, together with elemental sulfur probably generated by sulfur-oxidizing Beggiatoa bacteria. Iron sulfides were not detected, consistent with the relatively low iron concentration in the wood. In a museum climate with high atmospheric humidity oxidation processes, especially of iron sulfides formed in the presence of corroding iron, may induce post-conservation wood degradation. Subject to more general confirmation by further analyses no severe conservation concerns are expected for the Ghost wreck wood.

Combining nine tree growth proxies from four sites, from the west coast of Norway to the Kola Peninsula of NW Russia, provides a well replicated (> 100 annual measurements per year) mean index of tree growth over the last 1200 years that represents the growth of much of the northern pine timberline forests of northern Fennoscandia. The simple mean of the nine series, z-scored over their common period, correlates strongly with mean June to August temperature averaged over this region ( r = 0.81), allowing reconstructions of summer temperature based on regression and variance scaling. The reconstructions correlate significantly with gridded summer temperatures across the whole of Fennoscandia, extending north across Svalbard and south into Denmark. Uncertainty in the reconstructions is estimated by combining the uncertainty in mean tree growth with the uncertainty in the regression models. Over the last seven centuries the uncertainty is < 4.5% higher than in the 20th century, and reaches a maximum of 12% above recent levels during the 10th century. The results suggest that the 20th century was the warmest of the last 1200 years, but that it was not significantly different from the 11th century. The coldest century was the 17th. The impact of volcanic eruptions is clear, and a delayed recovery from pairs or multiple eruptions suggests the presence of some positive feedback mechanism. There is no clear and consistent link between northern Fennoscandian summer temperatures and solar forcing.

Times Cited: 0; International audience; Trees can take up and assimilate contaminants from the soil, subsurface, and groundwater. Contaminants in the transpiration stream can become bound or incorporated into the annual rings formed in trees of the temperate zones. The chemical analysis of precisely dated tree rings, called dendrochemistry, can be used to interpret past plant interactions with contaminants. This investigation demonstrates that dendrochemistry can be used to generate historical scenarios of past contamination of groundwater by chlorinated solvents at a site in Verl, Germany. Increment cores from trees at the Verl site were collected and analyzed by energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence (EDXRF) line scanning. The EDXRF profiles showed four to six time periods where tree rings had anomalously high concentrations of chlorine (Cl) as an indicator of potential contamination by chlorinated solvents.

Cloud cover is one of the most important factors controlling the radiation balance of the Earth. The response of cloud cover to increasing global temperatures represents the largest uncertainty in ...

In New Zealand human cryptosporidiosis demonstrates spring and autumn peaks of incidence with the spring peak being three times greater in magnitude than the autumn peak. The imbalance between the two peaks is notable, and may be associated with the high livestock density in New Zealand. In the summer and autumn the cryptosporidiosis rate was positively associated with temperatures in the current and previous month, highlighting the importance of outdoor recreation to transmission. No associations between spring incidence and weather were found providing little support for the importance of drinking-water pathways. Imported travel cases do not appear to be an important factor in the aetiology of cryptosporidiosis in New Zealand.

Climate Dynamics, 31 (6), ISSN:0930-7575, ISSN:1432-0894

High-resolution proxies of past climate are essential for a better understanding of the climate system. Tree rings are routinely used to reconstruct Holocene climate variations at high temporal resolution, but only rarely have they offered insight into climate variability during earlier periods. Fitzroya cupressoides-a South American conifer which attains ages up to 3,600 years-has been shown to record summer temperatures in northern Patagonia during the past few millennia. Here we report a floating 1,229-year chronology developed from subfossil stumps of F. cupressoides in southern Chile that dates back to approximately 50,000 14C years before present. We use this chronology to calculate the spectral characteristics of climate variability in this time, which was probably an interstadial (relatively warm) period. Growth oscillations at periods of 150-250, 87-94, 45.5, 24.1, 17.8, 9.3 and 2.7-5.3 years are identified in the annual subfossil record. A comparison with the power spectra of chronologies derived from living F. cupressoides trees shows strong similarities with the 50,000-year-old chronology, indicating that similar growth forcing factors operated in this glacial interstadial phase as in the current interglacial conditions.

In 1945 Storglaciaren located in the Kebnekaise massif, northern Sweden, was selected for a long term study of the climatic impact on glaciers and an annual mass balance programme was initiated. Si...

The annual growth of trees, as represented by a variety of ring–width, densitometric, or chemical parameters, represents a combined record of different environmental forcings, one of which is climate. Along with climate, relatively large–scale positive growth influences such as hypothesized ‘fertilizationrsquo; due to increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide or various nitrogenous compounds, or possibly deleterious effects of ‘acid rain’ or increased ultra–violet radiation, might all be expected to exert some influence on recent tree growth rates. Inferring the details of past climate variability from tree–ring data remains a largely empirical exercise, but one that goes hand–in–hand with the development of techniques that seek to identify and isolate the confounding influence of local and larger–scale non–climatic factors.By judicious sampling, and the use of rigorous statistical procedures, dendroclimatology has provided unique insight into the nature of past climate variability, but most significantly at interannual, decadal, and centennial timescales. Here, examples are shown that illustrate the reconstruction of annually resolved patterns of past summer temperature around the Northern Hemisphere, as well as some more localized reconstructions, but ones which span 1000 years or more. These data provide the means of exploring the possible role of different climate forcings; for example, they provide evidence of the large–scale effects of explosive volcanic eruptions on regional and hemispheric temperatures during the last 400 years.However, a dramatic change in the sensitivity of hemispheric tree–growth to temperature forcing has become apparent during recent decades, and there is additional evidence of major tree–growth (and hence, probably, ecosystem biomass) increases in the northern boreal forests, most clearly over the last century. These possibly anthropogenically related changes in the ecology of tree growth have important implications for modelling future atmospheric CO2concentrations. Also, where dendroclimatology is concerned to reconstruct longer (increasingly above centennial) temperature histories, such alterations of ‘normal’ (pre–industrial) tree–growth rates and climate–growth relationships must be accounted for in our attempts to translate the evidence of past tree growth changes.

Mass balance measurements for the balance years 1985/86, 1986/87 and 1987/88 and calculations of the volume changes since the last maximum around 1915 have been carried out for Sydostra Kaskasatjak...