Cj. Earle et al., SUMMER TEMPERATURE SINCE 1600 FOR THE UPPER KOLYMA REGION, NORTHEASTERN RUSSIA, RECONSTRUCTED FROM TREE-RINGS, Arctic and alpine research, 26(1), 1994, pp. 60-65
Dahurian larch (Larix gmelini) growing in the Upper Kolyma region of n
ortheastern Siberia provide the first tree-ring chronology from this a
rea. Ring widths in this long-lived species are highly correlated (r =
0.33 to 0.62) with average daily maximum temperatures for summer mont
hs and weakly correlated with other monthly climate variables. The cor
relation with summer temperature was sufficiently strong to reconstruc
t a long (1545-1989) temperature record for a nearby meteorological st
ation at Atka. This reconstruction indicates that temperature during t
he 20th century has been generally less variable than during much of t
he past 400 yr. A period of warming from 1910 to 1965 has ended and a
cooling trend has prevailed since 1977. Comparison with a Siberian lar
ch (Larix siberica) chronology from the polar Urals reveals decades-lo
ng periods of agreement and of disagreement between the two chronologi
es. These suggest the presence of occasional persistent anomalies in t
he atmospheric circulation of arctic Asia, which warrant exploration b
y further dendroclimatic studies in this region.