New Study: ‘The Most Suitable Place In The World For Temperature Reconstruction’ Shows Net Cooling Since The 1930s

A new 1876-present temperature reconstruction for Northern Finland shows the 1930s were the warmest period of the last 140 years. And there has been no net warming since.

Tree density analysis, MXD, has a “more prominent association with temperature” than measuring tree ring widths because it can more clearly separate precipitation factors affecting tree growth from temperature-limiting factors (Bjorklund et al., 2020).

Northern Finland is characterized as “the most suitable place in the world for temperature reconstruction” because it sits on the edge of where trees can or cannot grow (or survive) due to clearly defined temperature limits on growth. (For example, forests used to extend to the coast of the Arctic Ocean during the Early Holocene, indicating the Arctic region needed to have been 2.5 to 7°C warmer to accommodate such tree growth.)

Pinus sylvestris (29 trees) from northeastern Finland indicate the warmest interval since 1876 occurred in the 1930s, and since then there has been no net warming. This is visible in both tree ring width (RW) and density (MXD) analysis.

Image Source: Bjorklund et al., 2020

Other new “dendroclimatic” studies also show a similar temperature pattern of a warm early/mid-twentieth century and a subsequent cooling in the 1960s and 1970s prior to another warming in the 1990s-2000s. For example, in China, tree ring evidence suggest such a pattern for soil temperatures (Yuan et al., 2020), and Keyimu et al. (2020) find “A.D. 1940–1965 witnessed the longest extended warm period at Big Snow Mountain Scenic Area over the past 180 years”.

Image Source: Yuan et al., 2020

Image Source: Keyimu et al. (2020)

Proxy evidence from across the Northern Hemisphere may also show this same warming-cooling-warming temperature pattern. They also show the modern period is not climatically unusual relative to past ~1,500 years (Stoffel et al., 2015, Schneider et al., 2015).

Image Source: Stoffel et al., 2015

Image Source: Schneider et al., 2015

6 responses to “New Study: ‘The Most Suitable Place In The World For Temperature Reconstruction’ Shows Net Cooling Since The 1930s”

  1. RoHa

    In his book “En Konstig Blandning”, Albert Engström has a story about seal hunting. (He spells “seal” as “skäl” rather than “säl”.)

    The opening words are
    “I had agreed with the geezers to go out to the seal ice in the old way – if only the ice would come. But for the last thirty years there actually hadn’t been any ice to reckon with. ”

    (My translation. Original here:
    http://runeberg.org/konstigb/0200.html )

    The book was first published in 1925. Engström gives no date for the story. This looks as though it might be evidence for a Scandinavian warm period around the beginning of the 20th century.

  2. Suomi ei olekaan kuumentunut? | Roskasaitti

    […] kera esitän linkin NTZ-sivuston artikkeliin (Linkki), jossa kerrotaan, että Pohjois-Suomi on ollut 1930-luvulla nykyistä lämpimämpi. […]

  3. salah bela

    Thanks for this great site
    good luck for everbody

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    […] Dansk sammendrag – v. Søren HansenLINK, til originalartikel på Notrickszone […]

  5. ziane

    Nice information.

  6. Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #415 – Climate News Live

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