Climatic Research Unit : Staff
![[mugshot]](keith.gif)
Professor Keith Briffa
Keith Briffa was a Professor at the Climatic Research Unit,
University of East Anglia, Norwich, U.K., where he worked since 1977.
He was born in 1952 and died in 2017.
His primary research interests were in late Holocene
climate change with a geographical emphasis on northern Eurasia. His
specialism was dendroclimatology (see e.g.
Chapter 10 of Bradley Paleoclimatology: Reconstructing Climates of the Quaternary)
a field in which he produced a number of widely cited reconstructions
of past climate variability (in western North America, northern North
America, Western Europe, Fennoscandia and western Siberia). He
coordinated
ADVANCE-10K
a European Community funded project
(involving 15 institutions in 9 countries) using various forms of tree-ring
data (ring widths, ring densities and carbon and oxygen isotopes) to
reconstruct high-resolution northern European climate change over the last
10,000 years.
Briffa engaged in collaborative tree-ring projects with colleagues in N. America, Russia,
S. America (Chile and Argentina), New Zealand and China.
Besides tree-ring research, Briffa's interests encompassed evidence of
recent climate change based on instrumental records, and the theory and
general application of various palaeoclimate data for describing 'natural'
climate variability, its relationships with possible forcing factors and
the relevance for anthropogenic climate change detection. Briffa was an
Associate Editor of the journals The Holocene (of which he was
a founding member) and Dendrochronologia.
For full details of Briffa's scientific contributions, look at his full list of publications.
Data and materials associated with his work are available at the
International Tree-Ring Data Bank (ITRDB),
via the CRU website and listed below.
- Briffa and Melvin (2010)
A Closer Look at Regional Curve Standardization of Tree-Ring Records: Justification of the Need, a Warning of Some Pitfalls, and Suggested Improvements in Its Application. in M. K. Hughes, H. F. Diaz, and T. W. Swetnam, editors. Dendroclimatology: Progress and prospects. Springer Verlag. (draft paper)
- Briffa et al. (2008) Trends in recent temperature and radial tree growth spanning 2000 years across northwest Eurasia. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 363, 2271-2284. (data)
- Briffa et al. (2002) Tree-ring width and density data around the Northern Hemisphere: Part 2, spatio-temporal variability and associated climate patterns. The Holocene 12, 759-789. (Temperature maps 1400-1960)
- Briffa et al. (2001) Low-frequency temperature variations from a northern tree ring density network. Journal of Geophysical Research 106i, 2929-2941. (abstract, paper, plates)
- Briffa (2000) Annual climate variability in the Holocene: interpreting the message of ancient trees. Quaternary Science Reviews 19, 87-105.
- Briffa, K. R., P. D. Jones, F. H. Schweingruber, W. Karlén, and S. G. Shiyatov. 1996.
Tree-ring variables as proxy-climate indicators: Problems with low frequency signals.
Pages 9-41 in P. D. Jones, R. S. Bradley, and J. Jouzel, editors.
Climatic Variations and Forcing Mechanisms of the Last 2000 Years. Springer-Verlag, Berlin.
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Dendroclimatic pilot study in Ethiopia - Report to the Overseas Development Adminstration (1986)
- Other abstracts
- Other data
Last updated: May 2018