{"id":202963,"date":"2025-10-05T07:17:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-05T07:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/202963\/"},"modified":"2025-10-05T07:17:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-05T07:17:08","slug":"a-new-way-to-look-in-the-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/202963\/","title":{"rendered":"‘A new way to look \u2026 in the past’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most people are familiar with the notion that “tree rings” \u2014 the concentric bands visible on a cross-section of a tree’s trunk \u2014 serve as an indicator of a tree’s age.<\/p>\n

Dendrochronology is the practice of using tree rings<\/a> to determine the age of a tree. But tree rings have a lot more to tell scientists and conservationists, and as NASA<\/a> and NOAA<\/a> both explained, they can provide critical insights into historical changes to a tree’s local climate.<\/p>\n

Researchers at the University of Arizona<\/a> recently published a paper in the peer-reviewed journal AGU Advances<\/a>, using variations in tree-ring data to reconstruct climate patterns over a 1,000-year period.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The study’s authors investigated the long-term influence of the El Ni\u00f1o<\/a>-Southern Oscillation (ENSO<\/a>), a natural climate pattern<\/a> with global impacts, on extreme summer weather.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The team worked with researchers at Columbia University, China’s Northwest University, and Spain’s Universidad Polit\u00e9cnica. According to ASU, the collaboration marked the “first time a reconstruction of the jet stream across the entire Northern Hemisphere has ever been created.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Specifically, they examined locked jet stream wave patterns and a condition<\/a> where a configuration of “five peaks and five troughs” emerged. Called wavenumber-5 (or wave5), the pattern is associated with concurrent extreme summertime weather events<\/a> worldwide.<\/p>\n


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Researchers didn’t find “an increase in locked wave5 patterns” in their millennium of data. However, they determined that winters influenced<\/a> by La Ni\u00f1a<\/a>, the cooling counterpart<\/a> to El Ni\u00f1o, tended to precede a summer of locked wave5 patterns<\/a> and a global uptick in extreme weather<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lead author Ellie Broadman explained why tree rings were integral to their research.<\/p>\n

“We don’t have direct observational data on the jet stream back more than a few decades, so we’re using tree rings as a new way to look at what the jet stream was doing in the past, even without satellite or instrumental records,” she said.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the authors observed that their findings introduced the “potential to increase long-term predictability of high-impact climate extremes,” which are “typically predicted only days or weeks in advance,” data that can be used to mitigate future extreme weather<\/a> impacts.<\/p>\n

Broadman further characterized their findings as a testament to the immense value of paleoclimatology<\/a>, a research field focused on data generated before modern instruments and record-keeping were introduced.<\/p>\n

The findings emphasized “why paleoclimate research<\/a> really matters,” she maintained.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Modern instruments only cover the same period humans have been warming the planet, so you need the long-term view to really understand the impacts of modern climate change<\/a>,” Broadman added.<\/p>\n

Join our free newsletter<\/a> for good news and useful tips, and don’t miss this cool list<\/a> of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\"Cool<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Most people are familiar with the notion that “tree rings” \u2014 the concentric bands visible on a cross-section…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202964,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[4253,192,6956,299,42132,2975,6632,79,2978],"class_list":{"0":"post-202963","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-climate-change","9":"tag-environment","10":"tag-extreme-weather","11":"tag-food","12":"tag-good-conservation-news","13":"tag-good-news","14":"tag-outdoors","15":"tag-science","16":"tag-yahoo-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}