Underestimation of volcanic cooling in tree-ring-based reconstructions of hemispheric temperatures
M. E. Mann, J. D. Fuentes, and S. Rutherford
Nature Geoscience (5 February 2012)
DOI: 10.1038/ngeo1394
A large volcanic eruption in AD 1258-1259 is expected to have caused substantial climate cooling, but evidence for this effect is absent from tree-ring-based temperature reconstructions. Numerical modelling of tree growth shows that the lack of cooling is probably an artefact caused by low sensitivity to cooling in trees growing near the treeline.