Pan-alpine summer temperatures since 742 CE
Albeit labor-intensive, tree-ring maximum latewood density (MXD) has become a prime proxy to reconstruct inter-annual to multi-centennial climate variability. We here combine such data from five valleys in Austria, France and Switzerland to present a June-September temperature history for the Europe...
| Autores: | , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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| Formato: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2025 |
| País: | España |
| Recursos: | Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) |
| Repositorio: | DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:dnet:digitalcsic_::2ffe1732147dc5ee3c71519f998018ea |
| Acesso em linha: | http://hdl.handle.net/10261/430433 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palavra-chave: | Climate reconstruction European Alps Larix decidua Maximum latewood density MXD Paleoclimate |
| Resumo: | Albeit labor-intensive, tree-ring maximum latewood density (MXD) has become a prime proxy to reconstruct inter-annual to multi-centennial climate variability. We here combine such data from five valleys in Austria, France and Switzerland to present a June-September temperature history for the European Alps reaching back to 742 CE. The pan-alpine record correlates at r = 0.89 with observational data and provides evidence for a prolonged Little Ice Age (LIA) from the 1250s to 1850s CE, during which summer temperatures were 0.59 °C cooler compared to the preceding Medieval Warm Period (MWP) from the 880s to 1240s CE. Temperatures rose by 3.65 °C from the coldest decade in the 1810s, which includes the 1816 CE post-Tambora “year without a summer”, to the warmest decade in the 2010s. The warmest summer in our reconstruction occurred in 2003 CE (+ 2.71 °C) and exceeds the warmest naturally forced summer in 970 CE (+ 2.19 °C) by more than 0.5 °C. This difference is non-significant, however, if we consider the increasing uncertainties back in time when fewer sites and trees contributed to the reconstruction. The pan-alpine record is the result of conducting MXD measurements over the past two decades in Swiss and German laboratories and sets a new standard in terms of explained variance and pre-instrumental temperature variability estimation in the European Alps. |
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