Long range correlations in tree ring chronologies of the USA: Variation within and across species

Tree ring width data are among the best proxies for reconstructing past temperature and precipitation records. The discovery of fractal scaling and long‐memory in meteorological and hydrological signals motivates us to investigate such properties in tree ring chronologies. Detrended fluctuation analysis and adaptive fractal analysis are utilized to estimate the Hurst parameter values of 697 tree ring chronologies from the continental United States. We find significant differences in the Hurst parameter values across the 10 species studied in the work. The long‐range scaling relations found here suggest that the behavior of tree ring growth observed in a short calibration period may be similar to the general behavior of tree ring growth in a much longer period, and therefore, the limited calibration period may be more useful than originally thought. The variations of the long‐range correlations within and across species may be further explored in future to better reconstruct paleoclimatic records.