“Chronicles of the Rings: What Trees Can Tell Us” by Jim Robbins, The New York Times, April 30, 2019.
“The fact that [The North Atlantic Jet Stream] has become more variable only in recent decades suggests that the shift is the result of humans’ effects on climate, Dr. Trouet said.”
https://ltrr.arizona.edu/?smid=nytcore-ios-share
“The lab has helped establish other labs around the world, which in turn has rapidly increased the number of studied trees. There are now roughly a dozen large labs globally and data from 4,000 sites on all continents except Antarctica. The information is stored in the International Tree Ring Data Bank, a library open to all researchers. As more tree data becomes available, a much richer picture forms of the nexus of past climate, ecosystems and human civilization.”
“...climate of the last half-century is far outside the historical norms going back thousands of years.
Living bristlecone pine trees are several thousand years old and their information is added to by those that died thousands of years ago, but remained intact in their cold, dry high-altitude environment.”
“Dr. Meko said. “It’s a little worrisome to see the most extreme years right near the present.”
“Other sources — lake sediments; ice core samples; coral; the otolith, or ear bone, of fish; and even the shells from living and long dead geoducks, a large bivalve with a snakelike appendage — add to the broader picture.”
“...the stars give up some of their secrets to trees. The sun and other stars emit radiation called Galactic Cosmic Rays, or G.C.R.s, that react in the atmosphere with nitrogen and change the levels of carbon 14, which is taken up by every living thing and becomes a tracer for cosmic ray levels.”
“Past spikes in G.C.R.s from solar flares...have attracted keen interest from researchers, because if they occur now they could wipe out communication satellites and other technology. An event in 774-775, first found in Japanese cedar trees and since found globally, is the strongest cosmic ray event in the tree ring record, a magnitude larger than the Carrington event, a solar storm in 1859, and apparently noted by people alive at the time.”
“This year also appeared in the heavens a red crucifix, after sunset,” was how the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles reported the event in the mid-eighth century.”
“It was most likely a huge solar flare. “It is unprecedented, there’s nothing else like it,” said Charlotte Pearson, a professor at the tree ring lab. “We’re trying to work out what it is and what caused it but we’re still not sure.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/30/science/tree-rings-climate.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
I am a retired high school Visual arts teacher. My main goal for my students was and still is to create a safe haven for creativity and personal growth. The making of art images and objects is conceptual and technical based. Personal choices, experience and discovery, is a journey toward independence and maturity.
