A New York story: not all the tree rings’ tales are about drought

Andrew Freedman had an interesting piece last month about tree ring research that’s different than the stuff I usually write about:

The past several decades have been the wettest in nearly five centuries for the watershed serving the nation’s largest city, New York, according to a new study. But that wet period is deceiving because it is masking the city’s real drought history and may be lulling water managers into a sense of complacency, which could hurt the city when the next severe drought strikes.

OK, not that different. Because the basic message from the tree rings – see my book for a ton of examples – is that the range of variability in past climate is greater than the instrumental record, and our post-Industrial Revolution society, has seen.