Spatial and temporal stability of the climatic signal in northern Fennoscandian pine tree‐ring width and maximum density

The spatial and temporal stability of the climatic signal in pine tree ‐ ring width and maximum density is examined using data from four sites in northern Sweden and Finland. Moving‐window multiple linear regression, using monthly and daily climate data, indicates that ring widths at all sites have been strongly controlled by July temperatures throughout the past century. The relationship between maximum density and temperature is stronger but much less stable across both space and time. Shifts in the hottest part of the summer do not explain large shifts in the period most strongly influencing density. It is concluded that palaeoclimate reconstructions based on northern Fennoscandian pine tree ‐ ring width chronologies should be restricted to the temperature of midsummer (July), whereas maximum density should be used to reconstruct the temperature of a longer growth season (June to August). They thus provide different and compl e mentary palaeoclimate signals. At all four sites, the correlation between maximum density and June to August mean temperature is lowest in the latter half of the 20th century, but split sample tests with strong verification statistics (RE and CE) show that this represents a quantitative change in the strength of the correlation with climate, rather than a qualitative change in the nature of that relationship, and thus does not invalidate climate reconstructions.