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Tree-ring derived Little Ice Age temperature trends from the central British Columbia Coast Mountains, Canada

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 September 2012

Kara J. Pitman  and
Dan J. Smith
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Abstract

Most glaciers in the British Columbia Coast Mountains reached their maximum Holocene extent during the Little Ice Age. Early- and late-Little Ice Age intervals of expansion and retreat fluctuations describe a mass-balance response to changing climates. Although existing dendroclimatic records provide insights into these climatic fluctuations over the last 400 yr, their short durations prohibit evaluation of early-Little Ice Age climate variability. To extend the duration of these records, submerged coarse woody debris salvaged from a high-elevation lake was cross-dated to living chronologies. The resulting chronology provides the opportunity to reconstruct a regional June–July air-temperature anomaly record extending from AD 1225 to 2010. The reconstruction shows that the intervals AD 1350–1420, 1475–1550, 1625–1700 and 1830–1940 characterized distinct periods of below-average June–July temperature followed by periods of above-average temperature. Our reconstruction provides the first annually resolved insights into high-elevation climates spanning the Little Ice Age in this region and indicates that Little Ice Age moraine stabilization corresponds to persistent intervals of warmer-than-average temperatures. We conclude that coarse woody debris submerged in high-elevation lakes has considerable potential for developing lengthy proxy climate records, and we recommend that researchers focus attention on this largely ignored paleoclimatic archive.

Keywords

DendrochronologyDendroclimatologyTree-ringsCoarse woody debrisSubmergedLittle Ice AgeCoast MountainsBritish ColumbiaMountain hemlock
Type
Articles
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 78 , Issue 3 , November 2012 , pp. 417 - 426
Copyright
University of Washington

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