Description
Working with living and subfossil Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) trees sampled close to the present treeline in the central Scandinavian Mountains just south of Lake Hackren (62°20'N, 13°20'E), the authors developed a continuous 1,091-year tree-ring width chronology running from AD 909 to 1998, which they determined to be a good proxy for summer temperatures in the region of their study by comparing their tree-ring width data with meteorological data obtained from nearby Duved (63°23'N, 12°56'E). Based on this history, they discovered, in their words, "evidence for a 'Medieval Warm Period,' where growth conditions were favorable in the tenth and early eleventh centuries." Their data also indicated that the warmth of the Medieval Warm Period was both greater and longer-lasting than that of the Current Warm Period, which their data depict as having peaked around 1950.