August-September maximum temperature reconstruction for the Southeastern United States (1760-2022 CE)

Over recent decades, the southeastern United States (Southeast) has become increasingly well represented by the terrestrial climate proxy record. However, while the paleo proxy records capture the region’s hydroclimatic history over the last several centuries, the understanding of near-surface air temperature variability is confined to the comparatively shorter observational period (1895-present). Here, we detail the application of blue intensity (BI) methods on a network of tree-ring collections and examine their utility for producing robust paleotemperature estimates. Results indicate that maximum latewood BI (LWBI) chronologies exhibit positive and temporally stable correlations (r = 0.28- 0.54, p < 0.01) with summer maximum temperatures. As such, we use a network of LWBI chronologies to reconstruct the August-September average maximum temperatures for the Southeast spanning the period 1760-2010 CE. Our work demonstrates the utility of applying novel dendrochronological techniques..., , , # August-September average maximum temperature reconstruction for the southeastern United States (1760-2022 CE)

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.mpg4f4r76](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.mpg4f4r76)

We provide a tree-ring-based reconstruction of the August-September average maximum air temperatures (degrees Celsius) spanning the period 1760-2022 CE for the southeastern United States. Reconstruction estimates are based on tree-ring maximum latewood blue intensity data from populations of *Picea rubens* (red spruce) and *Tsuga canadensis* (eastern hemlock) from numerous sites across the southern Appalachian mountains. In the attached dataset, we provide the reconstruction estimates as anomalies (degrees Celsius), calculated relative to the 1901-1980 CE average. We also include the raw tree-ring blue intensity data used for the reconstruction.

## Datasets included:

1\) Reconstructed August-September average maximum air temperatures for the Southeastern US. Data are uploaded as text (.txt) ...