Silent witnesses: how an ice age was written in the trees

What connects a series of volcanic eruptions and severe summer cooling with a century of pandemics, human migration and the rise and fall of civilisations’ Tree rings, says Ulf Büntgen, who leads Cambridge’s first dedicated tree-ring laboratory at the Department of Geography.

Once you embark on these integrative approaches you can ask questions like how did complex societies cope with climate change? That’s when it starts to get really exciting.
Ulf Büntgen

Read more about how tree rings are helping researchers unravel past climates and their impact on civilisations.