The geniuses at Columbia University’s Lamont -Doherty Earth Observatory have discovered Liebigs Law of the Minimum. The tree researcher exclaims: “I was expecting to see trees stressed from the warmer temperatures,”…“What we found was a surprise.”
Trees on Tundra’s Border Are Growing Faster in a Hotter Climate
Measuring Techniques Improve—But the Implications Are Not Certain
Evergreen trees at the edge of Alaska’s tundra are growing faster, suggesting that at least some forests may be adapting to a rapidly warming climate, says a new study.
While forests elsewhere are thinning from wildfires, insect damage and droughts partially attributed to global warming, some white spruce trees in the far north of Alaska have grown more vigorously in the last hundred years, especially since 1950, the study has found. The health of forests globally is gaining attention, because trees are thought to absorb a third of all industrial carbon emissions, transferring carbon dioxide into soil and wood. The study, in the journal Environmental Research Letters, spans 1,000 years and bolsters the idea that far northern ecosystems may play a future role in the balance of planet-warming carbon dioxide that remains in the air. It also strengthens support for an alternative technique for teasing climate data from trees in the far north, sidestepping recent methodological objections from climate skeptics.
“I was expecting to see trees stressed from the warmer temperatures,” said study lead author Laia Andreu-Hayles, a tree ring scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “What we found was a surprise.”
Members of the Lamont Tree-Ring Lab have traveled repeatedly to Alaska, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge this past summer. In an area where the northern treeline gives way to open tundra, the scientists removed cores from living white spruces, as well as long-dead partially fossilized trees preserved under the cold conditions. In warm years, trees tend to produce wider, denser rings and in cool years, the rings are typically narrower and less dense. Using this basic idea and samples from a 2002 trip to the refuge, Andreu-Hayles and her colleagues assembled a climate timeline for Alaska’s Firth River region going back to the year 1067. They discovered that both tree-ring width and density shot up starting a hundred years ago, and rose even more after 1950. Their findings match a separate team’s study earlier this year that used satellite imagery and tree rings to also show that trees in this region are growing faster, but that survey extended only to 1982.
The added growth is happening as the arctic faces rapid warming. While global temperatures since the 1950s rose 1.6 degrees F, parts of the northern latitudes warmed 4 to 5 degrees F. “For the moment, warmer temperatures are helping the trees along the tundra,” said study coauthor Kevin Anchukaitis, a tree-ring scientist at Lamont. “It’s a fairly wet, fairly cool, site overall, so those longer growing seasons allow the trees to grow more.”
The outlook may be less favorable for the vast interior forests that ring the Arctic Circle. Satellite images have revealed swaths of brown, dying vegetation and a growing number of catastrophic wildfires in the last decade across parts of interior Alaska, Canada and Russia. Evidence suggests forests elsewhere are struggling, too. In the American West, bark beetles benefitting from milder winters have devastated millions of acres of trees weakened by lack of water. A 2009 study in the journal Science found that mortality rates in once healthy old-growth conifer forests have doubled in the past few decades. Heat and water stress are also affecting some tropical forests already threatened by clear-cutting for farming and development.
Another paper in Science recently estimated that the world’s 10 billion acres of forest are now absorbing about a third of carbon emissions, helping to limit carbon dioxide levels and keep the planet cooler than it would be otherwise.
There are already signs that the treeline is pushing north, and if this continues, northern ecosystems will change. Warming temperatures have benefitted not only white spruce, the dominant treeline species in northwestern North America, but also woody deciduous shrubs on the tundra, which have begun shading out other plants as they expand their range. As habitats change, scientists are asking whether insects, migratory songbirds, caribou and other animals that have evolved to exploit the tundra environment will adapt. “Some of these changes will be ecologically beneficial, but others may not,” said Natalie Boelman, an ecologist at Lamont-Doherty who is studying the effects of climate change in the Alaskan tundra.
In another finding, the study strengthens scientists’ ability to use tree rings to measure past climate. Since about 1950, tree ring widths in some northern locations have stopped varying in tandem with temperature, even though modern instruments confirm that temperatures are on a steady rise. As scientists looked for ways to get around the problem, critics of modern climate science dismissed the tree ring data as unreliable and accused scientists of cooking up tricks to support the theory of global warming. The accusations came to a head when stolen mails discussing the discrepancy between tree-ring records and actual temperatures came to light during the so-called “Climategate” episode of 2009-10.
The fact that temperatures were rising was never really in dispute among scientists, who had thermometers as well as tree rings to confirm the trend. But still scientists struggled with how to correct for the so-called “divergence problem.’’ The present study adds support for another proxy for tree growth: ring density. Trees tend to produce cells with thicker walls at the end of the growing season, forming a dark band of dense wood. While tree-ring width in some places stops correlating with temperature after 1950, possibly due to moisture stress or changes in seasonality due to warming, tree ring density at the site studied continues to track temperature.
“This is methodologically a big leap forward that will allow scientists to go back to sites sampled in the past and fill in the gaps,” said Glenn Juday, a forest ecologist at University of Alaska, Fairbanks, who was not involved in the study. The researchers plan to return to Alaska and other northern forest locations to improve geographical coverage and get more recent records from some sites. They are also investigating the use of stable isotopes to extract climate information from tree rings.
Other authors of the study include Rosanne D’Arrigo, Lamont-Doherty; Pieter Beck and Scott Goetz, Woods Hole Research Center and David Frank, Swiss Federal Research Institute. The study received funding from the Swiss and US national science foundations.
The tree researcher exclaims: “I was expecting to see trees stressed from the warmer temperatures,”…“What we found was a surprise.”
==============================================
If that were true, MIchael Mann would use all his tree rings upside down – except Tiljander.
“trees grow better in a warmer climate with more carbon dioxide”
yes,yes,yes.
But was it worse than we thought? Unprecedented? unequivocal?
Nothing is clear from the article on this research except the silliness of whoever wrote the article:
1. The so called tree ring experts would never have questioned the worthlessness of their ‘proxy’ if Skeptics hadn’t debunked their institutional theory,
2. Lucky thing for “stolen emails”,
3. Is that the two-step “side step”?,
4. What is this improved methodology exactly; find something, anything, that does track with the institutional theory?,
5. “The tree rings indicate the world is warming, the ‘divergence problem’ proves it”,
6. So warmer temperatures cause more rapid growth, except when it doesn’t, then it causes more dense growth. Now there’s a ‘proxy’ you can depend on.
7. Luckily beginning from about the time satellite data were able to start verifying whether or not the basis for accepting tree rings as a temperature ‘proxy’ is valid, the 1950 manual calibration variable for the ‘proxy’ can be applied. (Use as needed to fill in the declines.)
Suggested hypothesis: Rapid tree growth, especially in the arctic, causes thermometers to read higher, except when trees are growing slower then denser growth will do it. Thermometers always read higher.
I don’t disagree the Alaskan arctic is warmer now than in the past. Anecdotaly, for one thing it has been harder to get thermal piling to freeze back in permafrost at least on the west coast, arctic circle lat plus or minus. Though probably as the article indicates, this has been going on for more than 100 years.
Her previous experience with measuring trees was entirely virtual.
I have only one thing to say.
http://media.photobucket.com/image/polar%20bear%20facepalm/Slslady1/polarbearfacepalm1.jpg
They could’ve saved some money by taking a train from Anchorage to Fairbanks and watching as the taiga shrinks the farther they move north.
JeffC says : “anyone who claims to be a “researcher” but is then “suprised” that warmer climates help pine tress grow faster is not a scientist nor a researcher but an ignorant robot simply spouting AGW nonsense”
JeffC, your blame is in the wrong place.
Jeremy has identified the real problem : “Perhaps this will raise [the researcher’s] awareness to the propaganda she has been living and breathing in our schools and Universities.”
I think that everyone here should give heartfelt congratulations to the researchers for (a) doing real research, (b) not distorting their findings to match preconceived ideas, and hopefully (c) starting to wake up to the fact that not everything they were taught at school and university was true.
Rather than being dismayed by this report, I think that we should be very encouraged by it.
What does this mean “10 billion acres of forest are now absorbing about a third of carbon emissions, helping to limit carbon dioxide levels and keep the planet cooler than it would be otherwise.”?
I thought one of our problems was deforestation? Does that mean if we didn’t cut down the forests we would be even cooler and the trees would be starving for CO2?
And how do they figure the forests are absorbing a third of the CO2 produced? Different flora use CO2 at different rates. It must have been one heck of a study to come up with that number particularly since they don’t even know where all the CO2 comes from!
What are the warmistas gonna’ say when we start growing wheat and corn above the Arctic Circle (I hope!)?
Oh, I forgot, they won’t like it one bit. More folks will be fed! It’s not the climate they have a problem with. We all know it’s the population! Worthless slugs that we are.
Al Gore’s Holy Hologram says:
November 11, 2011 at 9:48 am
The only thing that grows better in colder climates is fur, fat deposits and bones.
And rocks. Every year the frost pushes up a new crop.
You could not make it up!! And we actually pay these people?
I said in an earlier comment, “they don’t even know where all the CO2 comes from!”
I think I’ll stand by that after finding out greenhouse operators pump CO2 into their buildings and I personally open 6 or so cans of Coke a day.
I wonder if they count all that?
I’m doing it for the trees (and the children, of course!).
Fort Yukon and Fairbanks – south of Firth River, show temps ranging from -60 – +80F yet an estimated general increase of 5F should cause these trees problems? Surely these trees are there because they can cope with the low temps? If temps went beyond 50C (what’s that in F – 130 or so?) I could understand thermal stress.
Hugh Pepper says:
November 11, 2011 at 9:52 am
Most of these comments are simply disrespectful and unworthy of further criticism. It is clear from this research that forests are in the process of dramatic change and it is a stretch to imagine a positive outcome after these changes. Given the host of negative synergies (eg wildfire), we should be very concerned about the prospects for a diminished boreal forest and it’s immense capacity to absorb CO2. Incidentally, these changes can be observed and I encourage your correspondents to make a trip to northern Canada or Alaska.
================================================
Hugh, these scientists are idiots….
Not one mention of C3’s or C4’s
In order to have fires, you have to have something to burn
Nothing is getting diminished, it’s moving
and the only reason they were surprised, is because other idiots have taught them that white spruce are on the decline….all they discovered is that they were lied to
http://www.agrowinginterest.com/presentations/Piacentini_Richard.pdf
My friend wants to know where she can get a unicorn hat like the one that researcher is wearing in the second picture.
Nevermind.
I seem to remember from the early days of CA and prior to this website, several people mentioned that tree line used to be hundreds of miles further north in the Canadian tundra, i.e., it used to be quite a bit warmer. Can anyone verify my memory?
highflight56433 says:
November 11, 2011 at 11:08 am
Given the host of negative synergies (eg wildfire),
Could it be you don’t understand the role of wildfires and how different species are fire adapted? Without fire on the west coast we end up with forests of hemlocks. With fire we end up with forests of doug-fir.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudotsuga_menziesii
Coast Douglas-fir is one of the world’s best timber producers and yields more timber than any other tree in North America. Douglas-firs are seral trees in temperate rainforest, and possess thicker bark and a somewhat faster growth rate than most other climax trees of the area, such as the Western Hemlock and Western Redcedar. This quality often gives Douglas-firs a competitive advantage when the forest experiences a major disturbance such as fire. Periodically, portions of a Pacific Northwest lowland forest may be burned by wildfire, may be logged, or may be blown down by a wind-storm. These types of disturbances allow Douglas-fir to regenerate in openings, and low-intensity fires often leave Douglas-fir trees standing on drier sites, while less drought- and fire-tolerant species are unable to get established. The boughs of the growing Western Hemlock limit the sunlight for smaller trees and severely limit the chances of shade-intolerant trees, such as the Douglas-fir. Over the course of centuries, Western Hemlock typically come to dominate the canopy of an old-growth lowland rainforest.
Following further examination, I would like to add an additional point.
It is directed at Hugh Pepper and his ilk.
This structure of the hypothesis underlying this paper is instructive of the erroneous interpretations found in almost all AGW papers, even though this paper appears to be favorable to the skeptic cause.
Let’s assume that their data showing increased growth is valid. Favorable growth range is predicated on the evolutionary principle that these trees have adapted to a specific climate regime. The authors have assumed that the temperature to which the trees have adapted has warmed. As skeptics, we need prove of that rather invalid assumption other than the current temperature analysis available. Understanding of the physiological processes involved in adaptive strategies (some potential candidates: seed germination temperature, cold temperature tolerance, enzymatic temperature adjustment, cuticular changes, etc.) would suggest that the extent of these trees range has been limited at an unspecified, but fairly hardfast northern limit, and logic would assert that under a warming environment (they state significantly for 50 years), that extent would have migrated north.
Therefore, identify the age of the trees from the northernmost extent southward, and determine if a statistically significant profile exists that validates your assumption.
Otherwise, omit any reference to temperature as a causitive mechanism. It just makes you look stupid to a physiologist.
In my visit to the Black Hills in 2010, I was pleasantly surprised to see healthy forests as opposed to the beetle-ravaged forests that I had seen on an earlier visit. The reason — a pleasant surprise! The forest service is thinning the forest which limits the damage of the pine beetles. Kudos to the forest service!
The sad thing is that the paleo-treeline in the Canadian arctic during the Holocene Climate Optimum is known to be far north of where it is today – apparently because it was warmer. Don’t these people read anything?
Also here in western Canada there is abundant evidence of forests growing high in the mountains where today there are no trees, because it is too cold. Of course the only news regarding these newly uncovered forests are scary headlines about global warming causing glaciers to melt and exposing these long buried trees.
The real question to me, is why did it suddenly cool fast enough for advancing ice to cover entire forests, and this question is never asked.
Coming up next : Shock link found between increased plant metabolism and growth throughout rest of food chain.
In the picture at the top of this post the young lady is measuring the diameter of the tree at about 18 inches? Standard tree measurements are made at “breast height”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diameter_at_breast_height
While the article says “In many cases the height makes little difference to the measured diameter.” they mean little difference between 1.4 and 1.5 meters. Below about a meter the height of measuring can make a very large difference.
Did they control for moisture? Moisture is almost always the main limiting factor in tree growth (except for trees that are most inundated or in very wet soil). I have not read the article.
Yup, it’s all about the sidestepping..
At least the giant birds will have something to sit on..
Actually I have hiked across a good portion of Northern Alaska. The trees are indeed stunted, often dead, subject to forest fires. They have been this way for tens of thousands of years. It is because of cold. Winter kill off , tundra and lack of sun.It was like this in the 80’s. It is like this today. The same trees in the peninsula are healthy, beautiful and very large.
Can someone help me out here-
“because trees are thought to absorb a third of all industrial carbon emissions, transferring carbon dioxide into soil and wood”
.I thought the sourcing of C02 was not settled.
Paul Linsay says:
November 11, 2011 at 12:00 pm
I seem to remember from the early days of CA and prior to this website, several people mentioned that tree line used to be hundreds of miles further north in the Canadian tundra, i.e., it used to be quite a bit warmer. Can anyone verify my memory?
================================================
Paul, here you go……plus finding dead preserved trees where no trees grow today is a dead giveaway….
Historical Aspects of the Northern Canadian Treeline
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=9&ved=0CGYQFjAI&url=http%3A%2F%2Farctic.synergiesprairies.ca%2Farctic%2Findex.php%2Farctic%2Farticle%2Fdownload%2F2786%2F2763&ei=54S9Tr-8E4-ftwfWx9zjBg&usg=AFQjCNE4haQZVavgrWLHoCcuEcjv5jX4vw&sig2=SWiUllYIiCtzR1U_8v9ODA
If that doesn’t work, google the title