A 4500-Year Tree-Ring Record of Extreme Climatic Events on the Yamal Peninsula

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Abstract

Based on the analysis of the frequency of anomalous anatomical structures in the wood of Siberian larch and Siberian spruce (frost rings, light rings, and false rings, as well as missing and narrow rings), we reconstructed a timeline of climatic extremes (summer frosts, sharp multiday decreases in air temperature during the growing season, and low average summer temperatures) in Yamal (Western Siberia) over the last 4500 years. In total, 229 years were determined to have experienced extreme events. The most significant temperature extremes were recorded in 2053, 1935, 1647, 1626, 1553, 1538, 1410, 1401, 982, 919, 883 BCE, 143, 404, 543, 640, 1209, 1440, 1453, 1466, 1481, 1601 and 1818 CE. These dates with extrema observed in Yamal corrobarated with tree ring data from other regions and revealed several coincidences. That is, in these years, the observed extremes appeared to have been on a global rather than a regional scale. Moreover, these dates coincided with traces of large volcanic eruptions found in ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica, dated to approximately the same years. Therefore, the cause of the extreme summer cooling on a global scale, in most cases, can be linked to large volcanic eruptions.

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Timing and climate forcing of volcanic eruptions for the past 2,500 years.

M Sigl, M Winstrup, J McConnell … (2015)

Volcanic eruptions contribute to climate variability, but quantifying these contributions has been limited by inconsistencies in the timing of atmospheric volcanic aerosol loading determined from ice cores and subsequent cooling from climate proxies such as tree rings. Here we resolve these inconsistencies and show that large eruptions in the tropics and high latitudes were primary drivers of interannual-to-decadal temperature variability in the Northern Hemisphere during the past 2,500 years. Our results are based on new records of atmospheric aerosol loading developed from high-resolution, multi-parameter measurements from an array of Greenland and Antarctic ice cores as well as distinctive age markers to constrain chronologies. Overall, cooling was proportional to the magnitude of volcanic forcing and persisted for up to ten years after some of the largest eruptive episodes. Our revised timescale more firmly implicates volcanic eruptions as catalysts in the major sixth-century pandemics, famines, and socioeconomic disruptions in Eurasia and Mesoamerica while allowing multi-millennium quantification of climate response to volcanic forcing.