High-resolution climate signals in the Bølling-Allerød Interstadial (Greenland Interstadial 1) as reflected in European tree-ring chronologies compared to marine varves and ice-core records

Quaternary Science Reviews, Vol. 20, p. 1223-1232, 2001 

M. Friedrich, M. Spurk
Institute of Botany (210), Hohenheim University, D-70593 Stuttgart, Germany.
B. Kromer
Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, University of Heidelberg, INF 229, D-69120 Heidelberg, Germany.
K.F. Kaiser
Swiss Federal Institute of Forest Snow & Landscape Research, CH-8903 Birmensdorf, Switzerland.
K.A. Hughed
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, 20 Oxford St., Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
S.J. Johnsen 
Departement of Geophysics, The Niels Bohr Institute of Astronomy, Physics and Geophysics, University of Copenhagen.

ABSTRACT.
Lateglacial and Holocene tree-ring chronologies are unique archives, which provide various information on past environment on a true annual time scale. Changes in ring-width can be related to past climate anomalies and dendrodated wood provides an ideal source for radiocarbon calibration. We present a 1051 year tree-ring chronology from the Lateglacial, built from subfossil Scots pines (Pinus sylvestris) that grew in different regions of Central and Southern Europe. Through a series of high-precision radiocarbon measurements we obtained a floating radiocarbon chronology, which allowed accurate wiggle-matching to the INTCAL98 calibration curve. The trees show a coherent pattern in ring-width variations throughout Central Europe, and extending into the Mediterranean. which indicates a strong external climatic factor, most probably temperature during the growing season. We identified major growth events, which appear synchronous with events seen in isotopic and tracer signals in the Greenland ice cores and with changes in the strength of upwelling in the Cariaco Basin.