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| Titel |
Mean annual temperatures of mid-latitude regions derived from stable hydrogen isotopes of wood lignin |
| VerfasserIn |
Tobias Anhäuser, Markus Greule, Gabriel J. Bowen, Frank Keppler |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2016
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
en
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 18 (2016) |
| Datensatznummer |
250123014
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| Publikation (Nr.) |
 EGU/EGU2016-2179.pdf |
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| Zusammenfassung |
| Tree rings are widely used climate archives providing annual resolutions on centennial to millennial timescales. Besides plant physiological parameters such as tree-ring width or maximum latewood density, stable isotope compositions (expressed as δ values) complement or even broaden the potential of the climate archive tree rings. A considerable wood constituent are ether-bonded methoxyl groups as part of lignin which can be used for stable hydrogen isotope studies. The δ²H value of the lignin methoxyl groups reflects the δ²H value of the tree source water as a result of a large uniform fractionation. Hence, this relation can be used to infer δ²H values of precipitation which are in temperate regions primarily controlled by temperature. Here, we measured δ²H values of lignin methoxyl groups (n = 111) of tree rings from various species collected along a ~3500 km north-south transect across Europe with mean annual temperatures (MAT) ranging from −4 to +17 °C. We found a significant linear correlation between δ²H values of the lignin methoxyl groups and MAT (R² = 0.81, p < 0.01). We used this relationship to predict MATs from randomly collected wood samples and found general agreement between predicted and observed MATs for the mid-latitudes on a global scale. Thus our results indicate that δ²H values of lignin methoxyl groups are a promising tool for mid-latitude temperature reconstruction of the Holocene. |
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