Persistent humid climate favored the Qin and Western Han Dynasties in China around 2,200 y ago.

The Qin and Western Han dynasties (221 BCE to 24 CE) represent an era of societal prosperity in China. However, due to a lack of high-resolution paleoclimate records it is still unclear whether the agricultural boost documented for this period was associated with more favorable climatic conditions. Here, multiparameter analysis of annually resolved tree-ring records and process-based physiological modeling provide evidence of stable and consistently humid climatic conditions during 270 to 77 BCE in northern China.

Highest Occurring Vascular Plants from Ladakh Provide Wood Anatomical Evidence for a Thermal Limitation of Cell Wall Lignification.

As an evolutionary achievement of almost all terrestrial plants, lignin biosynthesis is essential for various mechanical and physiological processes. Possible effects of plant cell wall lignification on large-scale vegetation distribution are, however, not yet fully understood. Here, we present double-stained, wood anatomical stem measurements of 207 perennial herbs (Potentilla pamirica Wolf), which were collected between 5550 and 5850 m asl on the north-western Tibetan Plateau in Ladakh, India.

Physiological meaning of bimodal tree growth-climate response patterns.

Correlation coefficients are widely used to identify and quantify climate signals in proxy archives. Significant relationships between tree-ring chronologies and meteorological measurements are typically applied by dendroclimatologists to distinguish between more or less relevant climate variation for ring formation. While insignificant growth-climate correlations are usually found with cold season months, we argue that weak relationships with high summer temperatures not necessarily disprove their importance for xylogenesis.

Coupled Pacific Rim megadroughts contributed to the fall of the Ming Dynasty's capital in 1644 CE.

Historical documents provide evidence for regional droughts preceding the political turmoil and fall of Beijing in 1644 CE, when more than 20 million people died in northern China during the late Ming famine period. However, the role climate and environmental changes may have played in this pivotal event in Chinese history remains unclear. Here, we provide tree-ring evidence of persistent megadroughts from 1576 to 1593 CE and from 1628 to 1644 CE in northern China, which coincided with exceptionally cold summers just before the fall of Beijing.

The dahliagram: An interdisciplinary tool for investigation, visualization, and communication of past human-environmental interaction.

Investigation into the nexus of human-environmental behavior has seen increasing collaboration of archaeologists, historians, and paleo-scientists. However, many studies still lack interdisciplinarity and overlook incompatibilities in spatiotemporal scaling of environmental and societal data and their uncertainties. Here, we argue for a strengthened commitment to collaborative work and introduce the "dahliagram" as a tool to analyze and visualize quantitative and qualitative knowledge from diverse disciplinary sources and epistemological backgrounds.

Tree-ring isotopes from the Swiss Alps reveal non-climatic fingerprints of cyclic insect population outbreaks over the past 700 years.

Recent experiments have underlined the potential of δ2H in tree-ring cellulose as a physiological indicator of shifts in autotrophic versus heterotrophic processes (i.e., the use of fresh versus stored non-structural carbohydrates).

Landslides associated with recent road constructions in the Río Lucma catchment, eastern Cordillera Blanca, Peru.

Extensive road construction works recently took place in the remote eastern part of the Peruvian Cordillera Blanca, aiming at a better connection of isolated mountain communities with regional administrative centres. Here we document and characterize landslides associated with these road construction efforts in the Río Lucma catchment, Peru. We show that a total area of 321,332 m2 has been affected by landslides along the 47.

Distinct types of landslides in moraines associated with the post-LIA glacier thinning: Observations from the Kinzl Glacier, Huascarán, Peru.

The Kinzl Glacier is a unique dendritic-type glacier of the Peruvian Cordillera Blanca and is surrounded by well-developed Little Ice Age (LIA) moraines. Based on field observations and analysis of historical photographs (since 1932) and remotely sensed images (since 1948), we interpret distinct mechanisms of landslides in these moraines and link them to glacier retreat and thinning. Three types of landslides are distinguished according to the cross-profile morphology: (i) type "N", (ii) type "M" and (iii) type "A".

Adverse weather conditions for UK wheat production under climate change.

Winter wheat is an important crop in the UK, suited to the typical weather conditions in the current climate. In a changing climate the increased frequency and severity of adverse weather events, which are often localised, are considered a major threat to wheat production. In the present study we assessed a range of adverse weather conditions, which can significantly affect yield, under current and future climates based on adverse weather indices.

Water footprint of winter wheat under climate change: Trends and uncertainties associated to the ensemble of crop models.

The impact of climate change could undermine the future grain production as a consequence of increased temperature and drought condition or improve the crop performance owing to the increased CO in the atmosphere. Wheat water demand and yield are strictly related to climate conditions of the area where the plants are cropped. In this study, we assessed the future trends of grain yield and water consumption in two European regions, Germany (Continental region) and Italy (Mediterranean region) in the light of the multiple sources of uncertainty related to climate and yield forecasts.