Ring Tree

March 9th, 2010 admin Leave a comment Go to comments

ring tree
What makes tree ring data such a reliable source of past climate?

Climategate reveals that using tree ring data is not always reliable, the temperature calculated from tree rings didn't match up to actual instrument readings, that's why they threw it out. Makes a lot of sense, I'd do the same. Today scientist know precisely what the variables are but for some unknown reason they are unable to calculate the temps using tree rings. However they don't question the reliability of data prior to instrument readings, when we knew less about the environment of those times than we do today.

So what makes tree ring data such a reliable source of past climate?

We've known about the problems with tree rings for some time. Climategate revealed how some of the AGW proponents responded to the problems.

Simply put, tree ring widths didn't continue to increase after 1980, when we know that the temperature went up. The fact that they didn't increase in the 1100s and 1200s had been argued to mean that the temperature didn't go up then. But now that we know that the linear relationship between tree ring width and temperature ends, we know that lack of tree-ring-width-increase during the peak of the MWP doesn't mean that it didn't continue to warm.

Keep in mind that this is on top of the fact that tree ring width is affected by myriad other factors such as moisture, pests, competing plants, soil quality at various depths, etc....