Late-eighteenth-century precipitation reconstructions from James Madison's Montpelier plantation

Historical documents and tree rings present a wealth of data for reconstructing prior climate. This study compared two approaches for reconstructing precipitation at Montpelier in the late 18th century. In addition to accounting for a significant portion of the variance in precipitation, these data also indirectly suggest the influence of larger-scale climatological processes. More importantly in the context of this study, the data also suggest a delay of approximately one month in the arrival of maximum summer precipitation from Madison's era and a corresponding shift in the sensitivity of dendroclimatic reconstructions of this delay.