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Tree-ring based reconstruction of summer temperatures at the Columbia Icefield, Alberta, Canada, AD 1073-1983

Department of Geography, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada, N6A 5C2

K.R. Briffa

Climate Research Unit, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK

P.D. Jones

Climate Research Unit, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK

F.H. Schweingruber

Swiss Federal Research Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research, CH8903, Birmensdorf, Switzerland

April-August temperatures are reconstructed from maximum latewood density and ring-width data for a tree-line site in the Canadian Rockies of Alberta close to Athabasca Glacier. The chronology primarily utilizes Picea engelmannii with some Abies lasiocarpa snags. This reconstruction (AD 1073-1983) is the longest densitometrically based summer temperature record from boreal North America. Mean temperatures from 1101- 1900 were 0.71°C below the 1961-1990 reference period and 0.33°C below the 1891-1990 mean of the instru mental record. The coldest interval was the first half of the nineteenth century and the major cold intervals, c. 1200-1350, 1690s and the nineteenth century, coincide with local and regional periods of glacier expansion. Warmer periods, c. 1350-1440 and in the present century, are also periods of higher tree-line or tree-line advance at the site. The 1961-1990 reference period is clearly warmer than any equivalent-length period over the last 800 years. This record of summer warmth reinforces evidence of significant warming at several high- altitude and high-latitude sites around the Northern Hemisphere in the late twentieth century. The reconstruction also indicates that glacier advances of the 'Little Ice Age' in the Rockies occurred during a period of fluctuating climatic conditions rather than a long period of sustained cold of several centuries duration.

Key Words: Dendrochronology • tree-ring densitometry • 'Little Ice Age' • climate reconstruction • summer tem peratures • Canadian Rockies • glacier fluctuations • late Holocene.

The Holocene, Vol. 7, No. 4, 375-389 (1997)
DOI: 10.1177/095968369700700401


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