July temperature during the second millennium reconstructed from Idaho tree rings

An 858-year proxy record of July temperature for east-central Idaho shows m ulti-decadal periods of extreme cooling centered around AD 1300, 1340, 1460 , and after AD 1600. These cold intervals are interrupted by prolonged warm spells in the early 1400s, late 1500s, and in the 1930s. The spatial signa ture of the paleoclimate record is centered on the north-central Rockies an d central Great Plains, and expands over North America following a wave-lik e pattern. Neither instrumental nor proxy data in Idaho northeast valleys s how unusual warming during the twentieth century. Climate episodes over the last three centuries are in broad agreement with the Greenland borehole te mperature history. Low-frequency patterns are consistent with other norther n hemisphere tree-ring records for the late Holocene, and provide a chronol ogy of warm and cold intervals during the Little Ice Age.