SUMMER TEMPERATURE SINCE 1600 FOR THE UPPER KOLYMA REGION, NORTHEASTERN RUSSIA, RECONSTRUCTED FROM TREE-RINGS

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.