Updating historical tree-ring records for climate reconstruction
Willy Tegel|Jan Vanmoerkerke|Ulf Büntgen
Over the past three decades, numerous Late Holocene-long tree-ring (TR) chronologies have been developed for different parts of Europe that allow archaeological, historical and cultural wood remains to be dated with annual precision. Ironically, palaeoclimatic evidence inherent in such composites is limited as modern updates essential calibration/verification instrumental measurements are often inappropriate, incomplete or even missing. Here we proposes a novel approach updating TR records while preventing statistical over-fit target data advocate ‘horizontal’ splitting between (early) recent (modern) samples prior their standardization (detrending). This split-technique will help overcoming unprecedented effects increased atmospheric greenhouse-gas, biospheric fertilization, forest management, sample replication, age-structure chronology development associated proxy updates.
Quaternary Science Reviews