Spring temperature variability over Turkey since 1800 CE reconstructed from a broad network of tree-ring data

The meteorological observational period in Turkey, which starts ca. 1930 CE, is too short for understanding long-term climatic variability. Tree rings have been used intensively as proxy records to understand summer precipitation history of the region, primarily because they have a dominant precipitation signal. Yet, the historical context of temperature variability is unclear. Here, we used higher-order principle components of a network of 23 tree-ring chronologies to provide a high-resolution spring (March–April) temperature reconstruction over Turkey during the period 1800–2002. The reconstruction model accounted for 67 % (Adj. R2 = 0.64, p