Finding Climate History in the Rafters of New York City Buildings

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https://eos.org/features/finding-climate-history-in-the-rafters-of-new-york-city-buildings

By Jenessa Duncombe, Eos/AGU. 

Excerpt: When renovating in the Big Apple, you might acquire a several-hundred-year-old climate database along with your new kitchen and bath. ...Hidden in wooden joists and beams in New York City’s oldest buildings is the largest repository of old-growth timber in the eastern United States, said Rao. These timbers can hold valuable information about past climates—but it can be uncovered only if scientists can get their hands on the timbers before they go to a landfill. ...Scientists and engineers estimate that 14,000 cubic meters of old-growth wood are removed from buildings in New York City (NYC) each year during demolitions or renovations; the city is continuously being remade. ...Dendrochronology emerged as a tool for studying past events in the late 1800s, when an astronomer, Andrew E. Douglass, recorded the patterns of wide and narrow rings on ponderosa pine stumps near the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz. ...Since then, tree rings have become a popular proxy to estimate past meteorological conditions. Ice cores, speleothems, and even bat guano have all revealed Earth’s ancient and historical secrets, but tree rings are unique because trees are so widespread. ...The International Tree-Ring Data Bank at NOAA has more than 5,000 tree ring measurements from six continents. ...Scientific findings from tree rings can advance climate science and inform regional policies. In 2004, an influential paper in Science suggested that the U.S. Southwest was in the midst of a long-term drought on the basis of tree ring records from the West spanning 600 years. Today, knowledge of this 22-year-long “megadrought” has prompted the widespread adoption of sustainable water practices....

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