The Truths in Ancient Trees

UA Regents' Professor Malcolm Hughes studies bristlecone pines that can live for nearly 5,000 years, recording climate changes as they grow. Hughes analyses data hidden within tree rings that reveal climate patterns across the centuries, then interprets today’s climate changes within that context. Hughes was one of a trio of U.S. scientists who showed that nothing like the global warming of the last century had happened in a thousand years. Working from a lab under the football stadium – where the founder of dendrochronology worked before him – Hughes helped establish the UA as a world-renowned scientific center for the understanding of global warming.