Journal article
Large-scale climate signals of a European oxygen isotope network from tree rings
DF Balting, M Ionita, M Wegmann, G Helle, GH Schleser, N Rimbu, MB Freund, I Heinrich, D Caldarescu, G Lohmann
Climate of the Past | Published : 2021
Abstract
We investigate the climate signature of δ18O treering records from sites distributed all over Europe covering the last 400 years. An empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis reveals two distinct modes of variability on the basis of the existing δ18O tree-ring records. The first mode is associated with anomaly patterns projecting onto the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and reflects a multiseasonal climatic signal. The ENSO link is pronounced for the last 130 years, but it is found to be weak over the period from 1600 to 1850, suggesting that the relationship between ENSO and the European climate may not be stable over time. The second mode of δ18O variability, which captures a north-..
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Awarded by European Commission
Funding Acknowledgements
All but four tree-ring stable isotope chronologies were established within the ISONET project (project no. EVK2-CT-2002-00147), which is supported by the European Union. The authors wish to thank all of the participants of the ISONET project who made this study possible by contributing data and the cited publications. The data from Turkey, Slovenia, and southwestern Germany were produced in the framework of the EU-funded MILLENNIUM project (project no. GOCE 017008-2), and the authors are especially grateful to Tom Levanic and Ramzi Touchan for these data. The tree-ring stable isotope chronologies from Bulgaria were established with support from the German Research Foundation (DFG; project nos. HE3089-1 and GR 1432/111) and in cooperation with the administration of Pirin National Park, Bulgaria. Additionally, we wish to thank Martin Butzin and Martin Werner for providing the ffi18O in precipitation and soil water from nudged ECHAM5-wiso simulations as well as Vladimir Shishov and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.