Discovering a missing piece of recent climate data
University of Vermont
Schoolchildren know that the age of a tree can be measured by counting the number of rings in a stump. But rings in especially old trees contain data that can’t be measured so easily. For example, stands of old growth forest contain centuries worth of temperature data that can be a key to completing the picture of how the climate has changed over the past several centuries.
Shelly Rayback of UVM’s geography department, and two colleagues, Grant Harley of the University of Idaho and Justin Maxwell of Indiana University, are using a $360,000 National Science Foundation grant to unlock this data and reconstruct summer air temperature in the Eastern United States.
“Our colleagues have been able to reconstruct moisture availability in this region, but no one has been able to reconstruct temperature on a large scale across the eastern United States,” Rayback says. “This has been a thorn in our side, because while we have fairly dependable temperature data recorded over the past 120 years or so, we don’t have a clear picture of what the temperature has been like over the past 300-500 years.”
The team of researchers will use blue light intensity methods applied to tree ring samples of several temperature-sensitive tree species from North Carolina to maritime Eastern Canada, like the red spruce. A simple flatbed scanner can extract the blue light data to create a deeper paleolithic temperature record.
“We know average temperatures are rising, but what we’re trying to answer, in a longer-term context is, are the temperatures we’re experiencing today somewhat higher than the past, or a lot higher than the past? We’re guessing the latter is true, but we need the data to support that hypothesis.”
Rayback says the data will be relevant not only to understanding temperature trends in the Northeast, but can also contribute to our understanding of broader climatic trends in the Northern Hemisphere. The data could also contribute to developing better general circulation models (GCMS) that scientists use to predict climate in the future.
Grant Harley is assistant professor of geography at the University of Idaho. Justin Maxwell is associate professor of geography at Indiana University. Rayback is associate professor of geography at UVM.
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My understanding from data available from NOAA and elsewhere is that the planet was warmer than now for between 1000 and 5000 years of the Holocene interglacial
I see they are geography students. So obviously well versed in statistics, atmospheric physic and meteorology
They may have undeclared minors in dildoclimatology.
I would have thought that biology was the most relevent field is you want to interpret the temperature dependency of plant growth. What the heck has this to do with geology.
I though the smallest unit of time for a geologist was 10ka.
How did they get a grant to study something which is totally out of their field of study ?
“We know average temperatures are rising, but what we’re trying to answer, in a longer-term context is, are the temperatures we’re experiencing today somewhat higher than the past, or a lot higher than the past? We’re guessing the latter is true, but we need the data to support that hypothesis.”
As soon as you read that, you know that this is not a scientific study but just another paid-for propaganda exercise on behalf of Global Warming/Climate Change.
Paleo temperatures from tree ring proxies? Again?
What sort of organisation gives a bunch of geographers a $360,000 grant to research past temperatures using tree rings? Is it just me or is this not a long way outside the expertise required for such a study? How can they possibly make reasoned scientific conclusions on the data they gather? If I want someone to interpret an old map I might ask a geographer but to interpret data produced by complex biochemical reactions in old trees I might look to a say, a biochemist or a relevant field of study. Geography, really?
Looks like anyone can get their snout in the funding trough, as long as you play the game i.e. say the right sorts of things to the right sort of people.
”are the temperatures we’re experiencing today somewhat higher than the past, or a lot higher than the past?”
This has probably already been said but ….Ha ha ha ha ha! Oh….stop it now….enough…
I thought that one problem with the hockey stick was that the most recent data from tree rings didn’t fit the required narrative, so actual thermometer figures for the latest years were spliced onto the tree ring temperature data.
Well, it’s good science to put your expectation biases right out in the open.