Abstract
The Arctic is one of the regions where the effect of global change is most evident. Associated with warming are changes in snow, sea ice and hydroclimate, all which have significant impacts on environments and society. However, due to short observational records, it is difficult to set the current climate in a long-term context. Arctic driftwood (DW), available throughout the Holocene, is a paleoclimate resource that may shed information on past sea-ice, ocean current and atmospheric conditions because it is transported by sea ice across the Arctic. Moreover, DW tree-ring data can be used to interpret climate in the boreal forests where the trees grew. Here we present a study of 380 DW samples collected on eastern and south-western Svalbard. Combining species identification and dendrochronology, it was found that the DW mainly consisted of Pinus sylvestris, Picea sp. and Larix sp. (87% of all samples), mainly originating from northern Russia. In total, 60% of the DW could be dated and their provenance determined, and four tree-ring width chronologies representing Yenisei and Dvina-Pechora were constructed, facilitating extension and improvement of the existing chronologies representing those regions. Moreover, DW from relict beaches that can be subjected to dendrochronological analyses, provides possibilities to extend pan-Arctic tree-ring data even further back in time. Because there are several processes governing the temporal patterns of wood deposition in the Arctic, using DW as an indicator of sea-ice variations needs further investigation.
Highlights
The Arctic is warming faster than most of the world, and the current pace of change is unprecedented in recorded history
We focused on Picea sp. (PCSP), Larix sp. (LASP) and Pinus sylvestris L. (PISY), for which suitable reference chronologies were available
Only two chronologies extended beyond the reference chro nologies (Dvina PISY DW 1525–1982 vs reference 1594–2011 and Yenisei PISY DW 1477–1988 vs reference 1584–2010), our results show that there are good possibilities for further extensions of existing northern Russian tree-ring chronologies
Summary
The Arctic is warming faster than most of the world, and the current pace of change is unprecedented in recorded history. The regional impacts of what is called Arctic amplification (AA, Serreze and Francis, 2006) are severe. AA may lead to an increase in the frequency and intensity of mid-latitude weather ex tremes through changes in atmospheric circulation patterns (Serreze and Barry 2011; Cohen et al, 2014), partly caused by a reduced equator-pole temperature gradient (Francis et al, 2017). There is still uncertainty about the nature of the influence of AA on lower latitudes (Cohen et al, 2020), because of a lack of detailed data on long-term Arctic climate and environmental change (Bekryaev et al, 2010; Pisaric et al, 2011)
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