The Sino-Swedish Center for Tree Ring Research (SISTRR) was recently established at the CAS Institute for Earth Environment (IEE) in Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province.
In the context of global warming, governments in various countries and scientists around the world attach more importance to climatic change studies. Tree ring dating, also known as dendrochronology, is noted for its high accuracy, continuity and resolution. It has been widely used to reconstruct temperature and precipitation in different historical epochs, and have become the main methods to detect the past climatic change and predict its future trends. Against such a background and on the basis of a long-term partnership, the tree ring research laboratory under IEE and its counterpart at the Earth Science Center, the Gothenburg University, jointly established a new center for tree ring research.
The aim of SISTRR is to investigate tree-ring related research questions in Northern Europe and China, especially regarding climate teleconnections between the two regions. One of the priorities of SISTRR is to establish extensive tree-ring chronologies from both regions, which will be the base of climate research, using tree rings as annually-resolved proxy climatic data. Together with paleoclimate models, these climate proxies can provide us with better knowledge about past climate variability.
