An environmental agency for a southeast Asian nation increases funding to study historic climate change and its impacts. The agency funds a proposal for a scientific subject matter expert to conduct a large-scale study of the nation’s tree rings.
What information will this study most likely reveal?
The study of tree rings, known as dendrochronology, is a method used to understand past climate variations. Tree rings can provide precise records of temperature and precipitation over many centuries. Variations in the width and density of tree rings can indicate temperature anomalies, such as warmer or cooler periods. Temperature anomalies of up to 1°C can be discerned from tree ring data, as tree growth is sensitive to even small changes in temperature. Therefore, the information most likely revealed from studying tree rings would be temperature anomalies up to 1°C.
“Tree rings: These measurements can reveal climate variations in regions where trees grow and experience seasons for the last millennium.”