Bighorn Mountains Dendrochronology

Inferno Canyon limber pine climate response

These results are preliminary and unpublished. Please do not cite or distribute. The Palmer Hydrologic Drought Index (PHDI) for Wyoming climate division 4 is significantly correlated with the standard chronology of limber pine ring-width indices from Inferno Canyon. The strongest correlation is with June PHDI, which is graphed below, but every growing-season month from May to August is significantly correlated wth the annual ring width indices. This chronology is also significantly correlated with May and June rainfall and temperature averages for Wyoming Division 4, and various single-station monthly values. The scatterplot below includes a correlation coefficient and a regression coefficient (in red) for a third-order polynomial regression which is plotted through the data.