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An annually resolved bristlecone pine carbon isotope chronology for the last millennium

  • Roderick J. Bale (a1) (a2), Iain Robertson (a2), Matthew W. Salzer (a3), Neil J. Loader (a2), Steven W. Leavitt (a3), Mary Gagen (a2), Thomas P. Harlan (a3) and Danny McCarroll (a2)...
Abstract

We present the first near millennium-length, annually resolved stable isotope record from bristlecone pines (Pinus longaeva, D.K Bailey). The carbon isotope ratios from the cellulose of seven trees from the White Mountains of California, corrected for anthropogenic changes in atmospheric chemistry, are used to reconstruct growing season (June through August) precipitation back to AD 1085. Extremely negative isotope results are strongly correlated with proposed severest El Niño events over the last 500 yr, and similar values in the first half of the millennium are used to reconstruct a further 13 strong El Niño events, concentrated in the 12th Century and the mid 13th and 14th Centuries. Ring-width chronologies from adjacent sites in the White Mountains demonstrate a high degree of decadal covariance with the δ13C series, although there are several periods of notable divergence.

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Corresponding author
Corresponding author at: Department of Archaeology History and Anthropology, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, Lampeter, Ceredigion, SA48 7ED, UK. Fax: + 44 1570 424994. E-mail address: r.j.bale@tsd.ac.uk (R.J. Bale).
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Quaternary Research
  • ISSN: 0033-5894
  • EISSN: 1096-0287
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