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. 2013 Jan 29;110(5):1773-8.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1211485110. Epub 2013 Jan 14.

Filling the Eastern European gap in millennium-long temperature reconstructions

Ulf Büntgen  1 , Tomáš Kyncl, Christian Ginzler, David S Jacks, Jan Esper, Willy Tegel, Karl-Uwe Heussner, Josef Kyncl
Affiliations

Filling the Eastern European gap in millennium-long temperature reconstructions

Ulf Büntgen et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

Tree ring-based temperature reconstructions form the scientific backbone of the current global change debate. Although some European records extend into medieval times, high-resolution, long-term, regional-scale paleoclimatic evidence is missing for the eastern part of the continent. Here we compile 545 samples of living trees and historical timbers from the greater Tatra region to reconstruct interannual to centennial-long variations in Eastern European May-June temperature back to 1040 AD. Recent anthropogenic warming exceeds the range of past natural climate variability. Increased plague outbreaks and political conflicts, as well as decreased settlement activities, coincided with temperature depressions. The Black Death in the mid-14th century, the Thirty Years War in the early 17th century, and the French Invasion of Russia in the early 19th century all occurred during the coldest episodes of the last millennium. A comparison with summer temperature reconstructions from Scandinavia, the Alps, and the Pyrenees emphasizes the seasonal and spatial specificity of our results, questioning those large-scale reconstructions that simply average individual sites.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Chronology characteristics. (A) Temporal expression of the mean EPS (computed over 30-y windows lagged by 15 y) of (B) 12 IND (blue) and (D) eight RCS (red) chronologies. Green curves are 40-y low-pass filter. (C) Grand average moving 31-y correlations between the 12 IND and eight RCS chronologies computed over their 1040–2011 AD common period, and (E) their annual differences (IND minus RCS). (F) Temporal distribution of 545 individual TRW samples (green bars) sorted by their innermost rings, together with the course of MBA (dark gray) and MSL (light gray).
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Calibration trials. (A) Positive correlations between 20 slightly different TRW chronologies and monthly mean temperatures from January (J) to December (D) and the May–June average (MJ) computed over the full and two split periods. (B) Measured (red) and reconstructed (green) MJ temperatures after scaling over the 1956–2009 period of reliable proxy/target overlap with the common extremes being labeled. Blue curve represents the East Atlantic pattern (EA). (C) Spatial field correlations of the reconstruction (green circle) using gridded 0.5 × 0.5° MJ temperatures over the 1956–2009 period. (D) Composite analysis of the reconstructed 20 most positive/negative (upper/lower) extremes against MJ 500-hPa geopotential height (gpm) data computed over the 1658–1999 common period.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
Temperature reconstruction. (A) Estimates of radiative solar and greenhouse gas (red and brown) forcing (51) compared with (B) reconstructed MJ temperatures (dark orange) and its uncertainty range (orange shading). The red and blue circles refer to the 33 warmest and 16 coldest years (>2 SD), whereas the horizontal pink and blue bars refer to the warmest (0.3 °C) and coldest (−2.45 °C) 30-y intervals. Important historical events of Eastern Europe with special emphasis on the Baltic region: 1, Conquest of Prussia by Teutonic Order; 2, Mongolian Invasion; 3, Black Death; 4, Battle of Grunwald; 5, Lithuanian Crusade and Polish-Lithuanian Union; 6, Thirteen Years' War; 7, Fall of the Golden Horde; 8, Rise of the Hanseatic League; 9, Livonian War; 10, Polish-Muscovite War; 11, Second Northern War; 12, Great Northern War; 13, Seven Years’ War; 14, Partitions of Poland; 15, French Invasion of Russia; 16, Polish-Russian War; 17, January Uprising. (C) A total 514 annual-resolved and precisely located plague outbreaks that occurred in the region between 1350 and 1798. (D) A total of 20,737 regional construction dates between 1000 and 1850.
Fig. 4.
Fig. 4.
European temperatures. Comparison between independently developed tree ring–based temperature reconstructions from northern Scandinavia, the Tatra Mountains, the Alpine arc, and the Mediterranean Pyrenees together with their spatial signatures expressed as field correlations (1956–2009) against gridded 0.5 × 0.5° temperatures of the corresponding warm seasons (indicated on the y axis). Annual temperatures are expressed in orange, whereas the corresponding 40-y low-pass filters are shown in red.
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