Climate Time Machine

Jimmy Bramante, a graduate student in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program, collected a core sample from an Atlantic white cedar tree in Cape Cod National Seashore recently. Tree growth is often affected by variations in climate, including precipitation and temperature, which is recorded in recorded in the width and composition of tree rings in many species, particularly Atlantic white cedar. Bramante was part of a team helping fellow graduate student Jessie Pearl collect the core samples as part of Pearl’s work to construct a climate history of the Northeast. (Photo by Jessie Pearl, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)