Climate of the Past Discussions www.clim-past-discuss.net 1814-9340 1814-9359 2 6 2006 10.5194/cpd-2-1051-2006 http://www.clim-past-discuss.net/2/1051/2006/ http://www.clim-past-discuss.net/2/1051/2006/cpd-2-1051-2006.html http://www.clim-past-discuss.net/2/1051/2006/cpd-2-1051-2006.pdf 1051 1073 2006-11-01 Multiproxy records of climate variability for Kamchatka for the past 400 years O. Solomina G. Wiles T. Shiraiwa R. D’Arrigo Institute of Geography RAS, Moscow, Russia The College of Wooster, Wooster, Ohio, USA Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Kyoto, Japan Tree Ring Lab, Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, Palisades, New York, USA Tree rings, ice cores and glacial geologic histories for the past several centuries offer an opportunity to characterize climate variability and to identify the key climate parameters forcing glacier expansions. A newly developed larch ring-width chronology is presented for Kamchatka that is sensitive to past summer temperature variability. This record provides the basis to compare with other proxy records of inferred temperature and precipitation change from ice core and glacier records, and to characterize climate for the region over the past 400 years. Individual low growth years in the larch record are associated with several known and proposed volcanic events that have been observed in other proxy records from the Northern Hemisphere. Comparison of the tree-rings with an ice core record of melt feature index for Kamchatka's Ushkovsky volcano confirms a 1–3 year dating accuracy for this ice core series over the late 18th to 20th centuries. Decadal variations of low summer temperatures (tree-ring record) and high annual precipitation (ice core record) are broadly consistent with intervals of positive mass balance measured and estimated at several glaciers, and with moraine building, provides a basis to interpret geologic glacier records.