Vietnamese Tree-Ring Data Show Multi-Decade Droughts - One Likely Toppled Khmer Empire - Reuters

[hatrack]

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Along the mountainous spine of Vietnam grow ancient conifers whose tree rings tell of droughts lasting more than a generation that helped push civilizations toward collapse, a climate change conference heard on Tuesday.

Research by scientists from the United States and Japan has revealed a record of drought in Indochina that goes back more than 700 years by studying tree ring core samples from Fokienia hodginsii, a rare species that lives in Vietnam's cloud forests.

What the samples show are two lengthy droughts between the late 1300s early 1400s, around the time the vast and wealthy Angkor civilization in modern-day Cambodia collapsed. "There was a very significant multi-decadal drought in the early 1400s with the worst drought year being 1417," said Brendan Buckley of the Tree Ring Laboratory at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in the United States.

Another major drought lasting at least 30 years hit in the mid-18th century, said Buckley, speaking by telephone from the sidelines of the conference in Dalat, southern Vietnam, that is focusing on climate variability along the Mekong River basin. "All of the kingdoms in Southeast Asia collapsed, in Thailand, Vietnam and Laos between 1750-80," he said.

EDIT

http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE51G1H220090217?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews

[theoldman]

1. This is just one way that scientists can determine our climate in the past.

Tree rings, ice caps,and fossils can tell us what the climate was like in Detroit in the year 10,000 BCE.