Inter-annual carbon isotope analysis of tree-rings by laser ablation

The stable carbon isotopic analysis of tree-rings for environmental, plant physiological and archaeological applications using conventional methods is occasionally limited by physical constraints (narrow rings) or administrative concerns (requirement for non-destructive sampling) that prevent researcher access to scientifically valuable wood samples. Analysis of such archives by laser-ablation can potentially address these issues and facilitate access to restricted archives. Smaller quantities of wood are required for analysis by laser ablation, hence the approach may be considered less-invasive and is virtually non-destructive compared to standard preparation methods. High levels of intra-annual isotopic variability reported elsewhere mean that a single measurement may not faithfully represent the inter-annual isotopic signal, so before such an approach can be used with confidence it is necessary to compare the stable carbon isotopic data produced using these two methods. This paper presents stable carbon isotope (δ13C) data from the resin-extracted wood of dated Scots Pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) tree-rings analysed using a modified Schulze-type laser-ablation system with results obtained using conventional manual sampling and analysis of α-cellulose prepared from the same tree-ring groups. The laser sampling system is found to perform very well against established more invasive methods. High correlations are observed between the methods for both raw and Suess corrected data (r > 0.90 n =50). These results highlight the potential for using laser-sampling to support the development of long isotope chronologies, for sampling narrow rings or for pre-screening cores prior to analysis using more detailed or labour intensive methods.201

Pervasive Growth Reduction in Norway Spruce Forests following Wind Disturbance

Background: In recent decades the frequency and severity of natural disturbances by e.g., strong winds and insect outbreaks has increased considerably in many forest ecosystems around the world. Future climate change is expected to further intensify disturbance regimes, which makes addressing disturbances in ecosystem management a top priority. As a prerequisite a broader understanding of disturbance impacts and ecosystem responses is needed. With regard to the effects of strong winds – the most detrimental disturbance agent in Europe – monitoring and management has focused on structural damage, i.e., tree mortality from uprooting and stem breakage. Effects on the functioning of trees surviving the storm (e.g., their productivity and allocation) have been rarely accounted for to date. Methodology/Principal Findings: Here we show that growth reduction was significant and pervasive in a 6.79?million hectare forest landscape in southern Sweden following the storm Gudrun (January 2005). Wind-related growth reduction in Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.) forests surviving the storm exceeded 10 % in the worst hit regions, and was closely related to maximum gust wind speed (R 2 = 0.849) and structural wind damage (R 2 = 0.782). At the landscape scale, windrelated growth reduction amounted to 3.0 million m 3 in the three years following Gudrun. It thus exceeds secondary damage from bark beetles after Gudrun as well as the long-term average storm damage from uprooting and stem breakage in Sweden

Causes and Consequences of Past and Projected Scandinavian Summer Temperatures, 500–2100 AD

Tree rings dominate millennium-long temperature reconstructions and many records originate from Scandinavia, an area for which the relative roles of external forcing and internal variation on climatic changes are, however, not yet fully understood. Here we compile 1,179 series of maximum latewood density measurements from 25 conifer sites in northern Scandinavia, establish a suite of 36 subset chronologies, and analyse their climate signal. A new reconstruction for the 1483–2006 period correlates at 0.80 with June–August temperatures back to 1860. Summer cooling during the early 17th century and peak warming in the 1930s translate into a decadal amplitude of 2.9°C, which agrees with existing Scandinavian tree-ring proxies. Climate model simulations reveal similar amounts of mid to low frequency variability, suggesting that internal ocean-atmosphere feedbacks likely influenced Scandinavian temperatures more than external forcing. Projected 21st century warming under the SRES A2 scenario would, however, exceed the reconstructed temperature envelope of the past 1,500 years

Tree rings reveal globally coherent signature of cosmogenic radiocarbon events in 774 and 993 CE

This study was funded by the WSL-internal COSMIC project (5233.00148.001.01), the ETHZ (Laboratory of Ion Beam Physics), the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF Grant 200021L_157187/1), and as the Czech Republic Grant Agency project no. 17-22102s.Though tree-ring chronologies are annually resolved, their dating has never been independently validated at the global scale. Moreover, it is unknown if atmospheric radiocarbon enrichment events of cosmogenic origin leave spatiotemporally consistent fingerprints. Here we measure the 14C content in 484 individual tree rings formed in the periods 770–780 and 990–1000 CE. Distinct 14C excursions starting in the boreal summer of 774 and the boreal spring of 993 ensure the precise dating of 44 tree-ring records from five continents. We also identify a meridional decline of 11-year mean atmospheric radiocarbon concentrations across both hemispheres. Corroborated by historical eye-witness accounts of red auroras, our results suggest a global exposure to strong solar proton radiation. To improve understanding of the return frequency and intensity of past cosmic events, which is particularly important for assessing the potential threat of space weather on our society, further annually resolved 14C measurements are needed.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Multispectral analysis of Northern Hemisphere temperature records over the last five millennia

Aiming to describe spatio-temporal climate variability on decadal-to-centennial time scales and longer, we analyzed a data set of 26 proxy records extending back 1,000–5,000 years; all records chosen were calibrated to yield temperatures. The seven irregularly sampled series in the data set were interpolated to a regular grid by optimized methods and then two advanced spectral methods—namely singular-spectrum analysis (SSA) and the continuous wavelet transform—were applied to individual series to separate significant oscillations from the high noise background. This univariate analysis identified several common periods across many of the 26 proxy records: a millennial trend, as well as oscillations of about 100 and 200 years, and a broad peak in the 40–70-year band. To study common NH oscillations, we then applied Multichannel SSA. Temperature variations on time scales longer than 600 years appear in our analysis as a dominant trend component, which shows climate features consistent with the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. Statistically significant NH-wide peaks appear at 330, 250 and 110 years, as well as in a broad 50–80-year band. Strong variability centers in several bands are located around the North Atlantic basin and are in phase opposition between Greenland and Western Europe

Stable oxygen isotopes in Romanian oak tree rings record summer droughts and associated large-scale circulation patterns over Europe

We present the first annual oxygen isotope record (1900 – 2016) from the latewood (LW) cellulose of oak trees (Quercus robur) from NW Romania. As expected, the results correlate negatively with summer relative humidity, sunshine duration and precipitation and positively with summer maximum temperature. Spatial correlation analysis reveals a clear signal reflecting drought conditions at a European scale. Interannual variability is influenced by large-scale atmospheric circulation and by surface temperatures in the North Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. There is considerable potential to produce long and well-replicated oak tree ring stable isotope chronologies in Romania which would allow reconstructions of both regional drought and large-scale circulation variability over southern and central Europe

Torneträsk tree-ring width and density AD 500 – 2004 : A test of climatic sensitivity and a new 1500-year reconstruction of north Fennoscandian summers

This paper presents updated tree-ring width(TRW) and maximum density (MXD) from Tornetra¨sk innorthern Sweden, now covering the period AD 500–2004. Byincluding data from relatively young trees for the most recentperiod, a previously noted decline in recent MXD is eliminated.Non-climatological growth trends in the data areremoved using Regional Curve Standardization (RCS), thusproducingTRWandMXDchronologies with preserved lowfrequencyvariability. The chronologies are calibrated usinglocal and regional instrumental climate records. A bootstrappedresponse function analysis using regional climatedata shows that tree growth is forced by April–August temperaturesand that the regression weights for MXD are muchstronger than for TRW. The robustness of the reconstructionequation is verified by independent temperature data andshows that 63–64% of the instrumental inter-annual variationis captured by the tree-ring data. This is a significantimprovement compared to previously published reconstructionsbased on tree-ring data from Tornetra¨sk. Adivergence phenomenon around AD 1800, expressed as anincrease in TRW that is not paralleled by temperature andMXD, is most likely an effect of major changes in the densityof the pine population at this northern tree-line site. The biasintroduced by this TRW phenomenon is assessed by producinga summer temperature reconstruction based onMXDexclusively. The new data show generally higher temperatureestimates than previous reconstructions based onTornetra¨sk tree-ring data. The late-twentieth century, however,is not exceptionally warm in the new record: Ondecadal-to-centennial timescales, periods around AD 750,1000, 1400, and 1750 were equally warm, or warmer. The200-year long warm period centered on AD 1000 was significantlywarmer than the late-twentieth century (p\0.05)and is supported by other local and regional paleoclimatedata. The new tree-ring evidence from Tornetra¨sk suggeststhat this ‘‘Medieval WarmPeriod’’ in northern Fennoscandiawas much warmer than previously recognized.Part of urn:nbn:se:su:diva-103

Potential bias in 'updating' tree-ring chronologies using regional curve standardisation: Re-processing 1500 years of Tornetrask density and ring-width data

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’