D. W. Stahle

A 1,200-year perspective of 21st century drought in southwestern North America

A key feature of anticipated 21st century droughts in Southwest North America is the concurrence of elevated temperatures and increased aridity. Instrumental records and paleoclimatic evidence for past prolonged drought in the Southwest that coincide with elevated temperatures can be assessed to provide insights on temperature-drought relations and to develop worst-case scenarios for the future. In particular, during the medieval period, ∼AD 900–1300, the Northern Hemisphere experienced temperatures warmer than all but the most recent decades. Paleoclimatic and model data indicate increased temperatures in western North America of approximately 1 °C over the long-term mean. This was a period of extensive and persistent aridity over western North America. Paleoclimatic evidence suggests drought in the mid-12th century far exceeded the severity, duration, and extent of subsequent droughts. The driest decade of this drought was anomalously warm, though not as warm as the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The convergence of prolonged warming and arid conditions suggests the mid-12th century may serve as a conservative analogue for severe droughts that might occur in the future. The severity, extent, and persistence of the 12th century drought that occurred under natural climate variability, have important implications for water resource management. The causes of past and future drought will not be identical but warm droughts, inferred from paleoclimatic records, demonstrate the plausibility of extensive, severe droughts, provide a long-term perspective on the ongoing drought conditions in the Southwest, and suggest the need for regional sustainability planning for the future.

The Relationship Between Earlywood and Latewood Ring-Growth Across North America

ABSTRACT The relationship between earlywood width (EW) and latewood width (LW) is investigated using 197 tree-ring collections representing several tree species from across the North American continent. Chronologies of LW have limited paleoclimate value when they have low variance or very high correlation with EW from the same site. The correlation of LW and EW can be removed by taking the residuals from linear regression to provide a chronology of discrete latewood growth free from the carryover effects of prior EW (the so-called adjusted latewood chronology, LWa). The correlation between EW and LW, along with LWa variance, varies dramatically across North America. The lowest correlations between EW and LW chronologies can be found in Pseudotsuga menziesii in the summer monsoon region of northwestern Mexico. Low correlations between EW and LW chronologies are also noted for Pinus echinata and Quercus stellata in the south-central United States. Q. stellata also displays the highest LWa variance among any species in the dataset. For three conifer species, correlations between EW and LW appear to increase with the biological age of the tree. An age-related decline in LWa variance was also detected for Douglas-fir, bald cypress and ponderosa pine older than 200 years. These results imply that heavy sampling to produce “age-stratified” chronologies based on trees ≤ 200 years in age throughout the record may produce the best quality LW chronologies with the highest variance and most discrete growth signal independent from EW.

Bridging the Gap With Subfossil Douglas-Fir At Mesa Verde, Colorado

ABSTRACT Old Rocky Mountain Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) trees and remnant “subfossil” logs have been found on the outcrop of a mafic igneous intrusion above the Mancos River Valley near Mesa Verde National Park. These trees and logs have been used to develop earlywood (EW), latewood (LW), and total ring width (TRW) chronologies dating from AD 722–2011. The new chronologies include good series replication during the former chronological “gap” from AD 1250 to 1400, which was so problematic for the initial development of the “Central Pueblo” chronology by A. E. Douglass. Discrete reconstructions of the cool-season (September-May) and early warm-season (June-July) moisture balance for Mesa Verde have been derived from the EW and adjusted LW width chronologies from the Mancos Valley. Cool-season drought is estimated to have been more severe and sustained than early warm-season conditions during the “Great Drought” of the late-13th Century when southwestern Colorado was depopulated. The combined archaeological, subfossil, and living tree chronologies of EW, LW, and TRW for the Mancos River and Mesa Verde Douglas-fir now date from AD 480–2011.