A detailed description is presented of the statistical patterns of climate forcing of tree growth (annual maximum latewood density and ring-width time series), across a network of 387 specially selected conifer sites that circle the extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere. The in‘ uence of summer temperature dominates growth. A mean April–September response is optimum for describing the major forcing signal over the whole densito-metric network, though a shorter June–July season is more relevant in central and eastern Siberia. The ring- width chronologies also have a shorter optimum (June–August) seasonal signal, but this is much weaker than the density signal. The association between tree-ring density and precipitation variability (as measured by partial correlations to account for the correlation between temperature and precipitation) is considerably weaker than with temperature. The ring-width response to precipitation is dominated by ‘noise’ and local site in‘ uences, though a negative response to winter precipitation in northern Siberia is consistent with the suggestion of an in‘ uence of delayed snowmelt. Average correlations with winter temperatures are small for all regions and correlations with annual temperatures are positive only because of the strong link with summer temperatures. Reconstructions of summer temperature based on composite regional density chronologies for nine areas are presented. Five regions (northwestern North America, NWNA; eastern and central Canada, ECCA; northern Europe, NEUR; northern Siberia, NSIB; and eastern Siberia, ESIB) constitute an arbitrary ‘northern’ division of the network, while the four other regions (western North America, WNA; southern Europe, SEUR; central Asia, CAS; and the Tibetan Plateau, TIBP) make up the ‘southern’ part. We also present two larger composite regional reconstructions comprising the data from the five higher-latitude (HILAT) and four lower-latitude (LOLAT) areas respectively; and a single series made up of data from all regions (ALL), which is highly correlated with Northern Hemisphere mean summer temperature. We calculate time-dependent uncertainty ranges for each of these reconstructions, though they are not intended to represent long timescales of tempera ture variability (>100 years) because the technique used to assemble the site chronologies precludes this. Finally, we examine in more detail the reduced sensitivity in the tree-growth data to decadal-timescale summer-temperature trends during the last 50 years, identified in earlier published work.

The annual growth of trees, as represented by a variety of ring–width, densitometric, or chemical parameters, represents a combined record of different environmental forcings, one of which is climate. Along with climate, relatively large–scale positive growth influences such as hypothesized ‘fertilizationrsquo; due to increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide or various nitrogenous compounds, or possibly deleterious effects of ‘acid rain’ or increased ultra–violet radiation, might all be expected to exert some influence on recent tree growth rates. Inferring the details of past climate variability from tree–ring data remains a largely empirical exercise, but one that goes hand–in–hand with the development of techniques that seek to identify and isolate the confounding influence of local and larger–scale non–climatic factors. By judicious sampling, and the use of rigorous statistical procedures, dendroclimatology has provided unique insight into the nature of past climate variability, but most significantly at interannual, decadal, and centennial timescales. Here, examples are shown that illustrate the reconstruction of annually resolved patterns of past summer temperature around the Northern Hemisphere, as well as some more localized reconstructions, but ones which span 1000 years or more. These data provide the means of exploring the possible role of different climate forcings; for example, they provide evidence of the large–scale effects of explosive volcanic eruptions on regional and hemispheric temperatures during the last 400 years. However, a dramatic change in the sensitivity of hemispheric tree–growth to temperature forcing has become apparent during recent decades, and there is additional evidence of major tree–growth (and hence, probably, ecosystem biomass) increases in the northern boreal forests, most clearly over the last century. These possibly anthropogenically related changes in the ecology of tree growth have important implications for modelling future atmospheric CO ₂ concentrations. Also, where dendroclimatology is concerned to reconstruct longer (increasingly above centennial) temperature histories, such alterations of ‘normal’ (pre–industrial) tree–growth rates and climate–growth relationships must be accounted for in our attempts to translate the evidence of past tree growth changes.