Abstract ATM-9406732 Jacoby, Gordon C. Cook, Edward R. D'Arrigo, Rosanne D. Columbia University, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Title: Derivation and Analysis of Climatic Information from Tree Rings This award supports dendroclimatic research at the Tree-Ring Laboratory (TRL) at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Analysis of growth rings of old-aged trees provides an almost unique tool for determining seasonal and year-by-year variations of past climate to evaluate recent climatic changes. Large-scale reconstructions and local studies show unusual warming in the past century, occasional abrupt climatic changes, and more prevalent extremes in dry and wet events. The current effort will update and improve the coverage of climatically-sensitive forest-ecotone sites with the addition of sampling for moisture stress variations and inclusion of subfossil material to extend the tree-ring record farther into the past. This extension is crucial for comparison of the present, possibly anthropogenic, warmer period to natural warmer periods of the more distant past.
