Tree-Ring Data from Subantarctic Forests: Indices of Southern Hemisphere

Abstract ATM-9416662 D'Arrigo, Rosanne D. Columbia University Title: Tree-Ring Data from Subantarctic Forests: Indices of Southern Hemisphere This award supports a project involving the development of high- resolution, precisely-dated tree-ring chronologies from the subantarctic land areas of Tasmania, New Zealand and Tierra del Fuego and their utilization in the modeling and reconstruction of indices of temperature and atmosphere-ocean circulation for the Southern Hemisphere extratropical latitudes. This project will 1. develop additional ring-width as well as maximum latewood density chronologies for subantarctic forest sites; 2. extend the Tasmania- New Zealand paleotemperature records further back in time through collections of subfossil wood material; 3. produce chronologies from several additional tree species; and 4. continue to model and reconstruct temperature and circulation indices for subantarctic latitudes. The information gleaned from this project will improve our long-term (centuries to millennia), high-resolution perspective of natural and recent climatic variability for a region of the Southern Hemisphere with very sparse instrumental and paleoclimatic data coverage.