Reduced Temperature Sensitivity of Maximum Latewood Density Formation in High-Elevation Corsican Pines under Recent Warming

• Main Authors: Philipp Römer, Claudia Hartl, Lea Schneider, Achim Bräuning, Sonja Szymczak, Frédéric Huneau, Sébastien Lebre, Frederick Reinig, Ulf Büntgen, Jan Esper
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-06-01
• Series: Atmosphere
• Subjects: dendroclimatology; tree-ring density; climate signals; <i>Pinus nigra</i>; climate change; Mediterranean
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/12/7/804

Maximum latewood density (MXD) measurements from long-lived Black pines (<i>Pinus nigra</i> spp. <i>laricio</i>) growing at the upper treeline in Corsica are one of the few archives to reconstruct southern European summer temperatures at annual resolution back into medieval times. Here, we present a compilation of five MXD chronologies from Corsican pines that contain high-to-low frequency variability between 1168 and 2016 CE and correlate significantly (<i>p</i> < 0.01) with the instrumental April–July and September–October mean temperatures from 1901 to 1980 CE (r = 0.52−0.64). The growth–climate correlations, however, dropped to −0.13 to 0.02 afterward, and scaling the MXD data resulted in a divergence of >1.5 °C between the colder reconstructed and warmer measured temperatures in the early-21st century. Our findings suggest a warming-induced shift from initially temperature-controlled to drought-prone MXD formation, and therefore question the suitability of using Corsican pine MXD data for climate reconstruction.