Swedish tree rings provide new evidence in support of a major, widespread environmental disruption in 1628 BC

Abstract

Pine trees, recovered from a peat bog in south‐central Sweden, are used to develop a continuous, but “floating”, 200‐year tree‐ring chronology. By wiggle matching high‐precision 14C determinations against the radiocarbon calibration curve, the chronology is positioned at 1695–1496 BC with an uncertainty of ±65 years. One major event, denoted by four consecutive years with extremely narrow rings, indicative of highly unfavourable local tree‐growth conditions, occurred in the time window represented by the chronology. This growth depression is dated to 1637 BC (±65) and may be tentatively ascribed to the same phenomenon that caused frost damage in trees in California and a growth depression in European oak in 1628/27 BC, hence providing new evidence of a more northerly area of influence of this widespread phenomenon.