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Growth/climate response shift in a long subalpine spruce chronology

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Abstract

A new Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.) tree-ring width chronology based on living and historic wood spanning the AD 1108–2003 period is developed. This composite record combines 208 high elevation samples from 3 Swiss subalpine valleys, i.e., Lötschental, Goms, and Engadine. To retain potential high- to low-frequency information in this dataset, individual spline detrending and the regional curve standardization are applied. For comparison, 22 high elevation and 6 low-elevation instrumental station records covering the greater Alpine area are used. Previous year August–September precipitation and current year May–July temperatures control spruce ring width back to ∼1930. Decreasing (increasing) moving correlations with monthly mean temperatures (precipitation) indicate instable growth/climate response during the 1760–2002 period. Crucial June–August temperatures before ∼1900 shift towards May-July temperature plus August precipitation sensitivity after ∼1900. Numerous of comparable subalpine spruce chronologies confirm increased late-summer drought stress, coincidently with the recent warming trend. Comparison with regional-, and large-scale millennial-long temperature reconstructions reveal significant similarities prior to ∼1900 (1300–1900 mean r=0.51); however, this study does not fully capture the commonly reported 20th century warming (1900–1980 mean r=−0.17). Due to instable growth/climate response of the new spruce chronology, further dendroclimatic reconstruction is not performed.

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Acknowledgements

We thank R. Böhm for providing instrumental data, the ITRDB contributors for tree-ring data, and K. Treydte and R.J.S. Wilson for comments and discussion. Supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation Project EURO-TRANS (#200021-105663) and the European Union Project ALP-IMP (BBW #01.0498-1).

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  1. Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, Zürcherstrasse 111, 8903, Birmensdorf, Switzerland

    Ulf Büntgen, David C. Frank & Jan Esper

  2. Dendrolabor Valais, Sennereigasse 1, 3900, Brig, Switzerland

    Martin Schmidhalter

  3. Department of Geography, University Bonn, Meckenheimer Allee 166, 53115, Bonn, Germany

    Burkhard Neuwirth

  4. Department of Archaeology Graubünden, Schloss Haldenstein, 7023, Haldenstein, Switzerland

    Mathias Seifert

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  1. Ulf Büntgen
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Büntgen, U., Frank, D.C., Schmidhalter, M. et al. Growth/climate response shift in a long subalpine spruce chronology. Trees 20, 99–110 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00468-005-0017-3

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