Climate of the Past Discussions www.clim-past-discuss.net 1814-9340 1814-9359 5 3 2009 10.5194/cpd-5-1415-2009 http://www.clim-past-discuss.net/5/1415/2009/ http://www.clim-past-discuss.net/5/1415/2009/cpd-5-1415-2009.html http://www.clim-past-discuss.net/5/1415/2009/cpd-5-1415-2009.pdf 1415 1461 2009-05-19 Dendroclimatology in Fennoscandia – from past accomplishments to future potentials H. W. Linderholm hansl@gvc.gu.se J. A. Björklund K. Seftigen B. E. Gunnarson I. Drobyshev J.-H. Jeong P. Stridbeck Y. Liu Regional Climate Group, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden Department of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre, SLU, Alnarp, Sweden The State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, The Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi'an, China Dendroclimatology, i.e. using tree-ring data to reconstruct past climates, in Fennoscandia has a strong tradition. Due to the high-latitude location of the region, trees are sensitive to climate; in general to temperatures during summer. However, a strong gradient from the oceanic west to the continental east, makes it possible to find trees that respond to other parameters, such as precipitation and drought. Situated in a sparsely populated part of the Boreal belt, Fennoscandia with its large areas of old-growth forests is suitable for constructing tree-ring chronologies reaching far back in time. Indeed, some of the world longest tree-ring chronologies are found in the region, covering all, or most of, the Holocene. In addition to providing valuable information about regional climate variability during the Holocene, tree-ring data have played significant roles in recent reconstructions of hemispheric and global temperatures as well as large-scale circulation patterns. Here we review the field of dendroclimatology in Fennoscandia, showing the wealth of climate information obtained from various tree-ring parameters (ring widths, density and stable isotopes), and look in to future possibilities. Andreassen, K., Solberg, S., Tveito, O. E., and Lystad, S. O.: Regional differences in climatic responses of Norway spruce (Picea Abies L. Karst) growth in Norway, Forest Ecol. 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