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Anomalous 20th century tree growth, Mackenzie Delta, Northwest Territories, Canada
Author(s) -
Pisaric Michael F. J.,
Carey Sean K.,
Kokelj Steven V.,
Youngblut Donald
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2006gl029139
Subject(s) - dendrochronology , delta , divergence (linguistics) , geography , physical geography , precipitation , dendroclimatology , climatology , offset (computer science) , geology , archaeology , meteorology , aerospace engineering , engineering , linguistics , philosophy , computer science , programming language
A number of contemporary dendroecological studies from northwestern North America have highlighted a divergence in growth trends during recent decades. These studies suggest that warmer temperatures are now exceeding the physiological threshold of some northern tree species, or perhaps are contributing to increased drought stress as current precipitation is insufficient to offset increasing water demands under warmer conditions. Here we document additional evidence of these diverging growth trends from the Mackenzie Delta region of Canada and show they are anomalous to the twentieth century. Using wavelet coherency analyses we demonstrate that our white spruce tree ring chronologies exhibit little divergence from one another during the past four centuries, but coherency of the data‐sets rapidly break down after the 1930s.