How Well Understood Are the Processes that Create Dendroclimatic Records? A Mechanistic Model of the Climatic Control on Conifer Tree-Ring Growth Dynamics - Dendroclimatology - page 67

Fig. 3.7 Significance of annual correlations of simulated and actual tree-ring width data for eight
sites across Russia (Fig. 3.4 ) and 190 sites in North America from the Mann et al. ( 1998 ) dataset.
Black and gray circles show correlations with significances at or above the 99 and 95% levels,
respectively; white circles show significances below the 90% level. Reprinted with permission
from Evans et al. ( 2006 )
general unavailability of meteorological observations of the appropriate timescale,
particularly from the remote alpine or tree line regions of particular interest to
dendroclimatologists. Even where daily meteorological data can be found, stations
may be located at considerable distance from the tree-ring chronology site, almost
always at a lower elevation, and often with different exposure and topography. While
differences in temperature between site and station can usually be evaluated and
reasonably corrected, it is quite difficult to do so for precipitation. The length of
the daily meteorological records also limits the period over which model skill can
be evaluated against the available tree-ring chronologies. At the same time, many
tree-ring chronologies in many parts of the world were originally collected in the
1970s and 1980s and have not yet been updated, further limiting the overlap between
simulated and actual tree-ring data.