Abstract
Abstract. The study of pointer years of numerous tree-ring chronologies of the central Iberian Peninsula (Sierra de Guadarrama) could provide complementary information about climate variability over the last 405 yr. In total, 64 pointer years have been identified: 30 negative (representing minimum growths) and 34 positive (representing maximum growths), the most significant of these being 1601, 1963 and 1996 for the negative ones, and 1734 and 1737 for the positive ones. Given that summer precipitation was found to be the most limiting factor for the growth of Pinus in the Sierra de Guadarrama in the second half of the 20th century, it is also an explanatory factor in almost 50% of the extreme growths. Furthermore, these pointer years and intervals are not evenly distributed throughout time. Both in the first half of the 17th and in the second half of 20th, they were more frequent and more extreme and these periods are the most notable for the frequency of negative pointer years in Central Spain. The interval 1600–1602 is of special significance, being one of the most unfavourable for tree growth in the centre of Spain, with 1601 representing the minimum index in the regional chronology. We infer that this special minimum annual increase was the effect of the eruption of Huaynaputina, which occurred in Peru at the beginning of 1600 AD. This is the first time that the effects of this eruption in the tree-ring records of Southern Europe have been demonstrated.
Highlights
In recent decades a considerable number of studies have been carried out about the climate variability of the Iberian Peninsula over the past millennium from numerous points of view
The principal aim of this paper is to provide new insight, based on tree rings, into the climate variability of the central Iberian Peninsula (Sierra de Guadarrama) over the last 405 yr
The analysis of the local chronologies compiled for the Sierra de Guadarrama has made it possible to identify a period (1600–2005) that is sufficiently reliable for the determination of extremes in the tree rings
Summary
In recent decades a considerable number of studies have been carried out about the climate variability of the Iberian Peninsula over the past millennium from numerous points of view. Tarrats (1971–1977) about the indirect registers of climatic events derived from very diverse documentary sources (mostly unpublished) and in many different regions, which were compiled and summarised by Font Tullot (1988), the knowledge of the past climate of the Iberian Peninsula from documentary studies has grown considerably (Martın-Vide and Barriendos, 1995; Rodrigo et al, 1999; Barriendos, 1997; Vicente-Serrano and Cuadrat, 2007; Rodrigo and Barriendos, 2008; Domınguez-Castro et al, 2008, 2010) Sometimes, this documentary data have been compared with other proxies, mainly from dendroclimatic reconstructions (Manrique and Fernandez-Cancio, 2000; Saz, 2003; VicenteSerrano and Cuadrat, 2007; Genova, 2009).
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