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Decadal-Scale Patterns of Climatic Change Over Eastern North America Inferred from Tree Rings

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Abrupt Climatic Change

Part of the book series: NATO ASI Series ((ASIC,volume 216))

Abstract

A network of 74 tree-ring chronologies covering much of eastern North America south of the boreal forest has been developed for dendroclimatic studies. The coverage (shown in Figure 1) extends from southern Canada to the southeastern United States and west to the 90th meridian. Ten tree species from the genera Picea, Pinus, Tsuga, Quercus and Juniperus are represented in the network. The chronologies in the network all begin at or before 1700 and end no earlier than 1972. The purpose of this paper is to describe some preliminary dendroclimatic analyses of the network using principal components analysis (PCA). These analyses reveal tree-ring anomaly patterns across the network between 1810 and 1880 which are both highly persistent and extreme compared to the pre-1810 and post-1880 periods.

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© 1987 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland

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Cook, E.R., Mayes, P. (1987). Decadal-Scale Patterns of Climatic Change Over Eastern North America Inferred from Tree Rings. In: Berger, W.H., Labeyrie, L.D. (eds) Abrupt Climatic Change. NATO ASI Series, vol 216. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3993-6_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3993-6_6

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-010-8272-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-009-3993-6

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