North Carolina Tree Ring Chronology From 180 to 41 BCE

Tree ring width measurements from the Barefoot - Lead Mine Hampton Hills site in North Carolina provide a 221-year paleoclimate record. The data, archived by NOAA's World Data Service for Paleoclimatology, covers the period from 180 to 41 years before the present era. This chronology was published as part of the International Tree-Ring Data Bank.

Use Cases

• Calibrating regional climate models using the 221-year tree-ring width chronology.
• Analyzing year-to-year growth variation (ring width) to infer past drought or temperature anomalies.
• Cross-dating this site chronology (ITRDB NC3) with other records to validate climate signals.
• Reconstructing pre-instrumental climate conditions for the southeastern United States from ring width data.

Strengths

• 221-year continuous chronology from 180 to 41 BCE.
• Data is part of the authoritative International Tree-Ring Data Bank (ITRDB).

Limitations

• Single geographic site limits regional representativeness.
• Temporal coverage ends 41 BCE, lacking overlap with modern instrumental records.
• Sample size and replication statistics for individual years are unknown.

Provenance

Source

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) World Data Service for Paleoclimatology.

Collection Method

Tree-ring core samples analyzed for width measurements (dendrochronology).

Time Range

180 to 41 calendar years before present (BP).

Freshness

null

Geography

Barefoot - Lead Mine Hampton Hills site, North Carolina, United States.