Using recent and historical larch wood to build a 1300-year Valais-chronology

TLDR: In this article, the 20-century warming in the context of long-term temperature variations, dendroclimatic reconstructions spanning the past millennium enable further analyses of the role of greenhouse gases on recent climate change.

Abstract: Introduction To add understanding to the current ‘Global-Change-debate’, it is relevant to study the variability of Holocene climate (IPCC 2001). By placing the 20-century warming in the context of long-term temperature variations, dendroclimatic reconstructions spanning the past millennium enable further analyses of the role of greenhouse gases on recent climate change. Tree-ring chronologies are frequently used as a proxy for climate variations, because width, density, and stable-isotope measurements obtained from trees correlate with temperatures over the growing season (e.g., Fritts 1976, Schweingruber 1996, Treydte 2003). These proxy time-series provide a detailed history of changing temperatures throughout the last millennium on local, regional and even hemispheric scales (Briffa et al. 2001, Esper et al. 2002, Jones et al. 1998, Mann et al. 1999). The reconstruction of climate variations using proxy data is closely tied to the calibration of tree-ring records against observational temperature (and precipitation) data to provide estimates of the magnitude of past changes.