WHAT CAN TREE RINGS TELL US?
Trees can live for hundreds—and sometimes even thousands—of years.
Over this long lifetime, a tree can experience a variety of environmental conditions: wet years, dry years, cold years, hot years, early frosts, forest fires and more.
Concentric rings in tree trunks tell us how old the tree is, and what the weather was like during each year of the tree's life.
The light-coloured rings represent wood that grew in the spring and early summer, while the dark rings represent wood that grew in the late summer and fall. One light ring plus one dark ring equals one year of the tree's life.
Because trees are sensitive to local climate conditions, such as rain and temperature, they give scientists some information about that area's local climate in the past.
Concentric rings in tree trunks tell us how old the tree is, and what the weather was like during each year of the tree's life. One light ring plus one dark ring equals one year of the tree's life
For example, tree rings usually grow wider in warm, wet years and they are thinner in years when it is cold and dry.
If the tree has experienced stressful conditions, such as a drought, the tree might hardly grow at all in those years.
Very old trees can offer clues about what the climate was like long before measurements were recorded. This field—the study of past climates—is called paleoclimatology.
Paleoclimatologists rely upon natural sources of climate data, such as tree rings, cores drilled from Antarctic ice and sediment collected from the bottom of lakes and oceans. These sources, called proxies, can extend our knowledge of weather and climate from hundreds to millions of years
Combined with weather and climate information from satellites, they can help scientists model major climate events that shaped our planet in the past.
And these models can also help us make predictions about what climate patterns to expect in the future.
SOURCE: NASA
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