About

Kevin Anchukaitis is a professor of Earth Systems Geography, specializing in dendrochronology, climate science, paleoclimatology, and earth systems geography. His research focuses on the reconstruction and analysis of climate variability and change over the Common Era, examining the interaction between past environments and human society. He employs a variety of techniques including dendroclimatology, climate field reconstruction, spatiotemporal data analysis, stable and radiogenic isotopes, proxy systems, numerical modeling, and the integration of paleoenvironmental data with Earth System Modeling to develop and interpret evidence for past, present, and future climate and environmental dynamics across different temporal and spatial scales, from local to global and interannual to millennial. Anchukaitis holds joint or affiliate appointments in the Department of Geosciences, the Graduate Interdisciplinary Program in Global Change, and Latin American Studies. He is the Director of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research in the College of Science, where students work on projects related to climate and environmental variability and change. His research projects include paleoenvironmental reconstruction, studying variability in drought, temperature, and ocean-atmosphere circulation, and integrating earth system models and data to better understand climate system mechanisms and future changes. His work also encompasses coupled human and natural systems, particularly in Asia and the Americas, as well as climate adaptation to variability and extreme events.

Research topics

• Climatology
• Geology
• Environmental science
• Physical geography
• Oceanography
• Geography
• Ecology
• Paleontology
• Archaeology

Selected publications

• Evaluation of daily gridded climate products using <i>in situ</i> FLUXNET data and tree growth modeling

  Environmental Research Letters · 2026-01-14

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Gridded climate data products have facilitated research in climate and ecology by providing meteorological data continuously across large spatial scales. However, the sensitivity of scientific outcomes to dataset choice remains poorly understood, and evaluation using station-based records can favor datasets built heavily on weather stations. Here, we evaluate seven high-resolution daily gridded datasets covering the contiguous United States using independent meteorology from the FLUXNET2015 dataset, with a focus on the implications of dataset choice for process-based tree growth modeling. We find that gridded products tend to capture temperature accurately while consistently overestimating the magnitude and frequency of precipitation and its extremes. Moreover, datasets vary in how they define a ‘day,’ which significantly affects temporal alignment with FLUXNET2015 observations. Despite differences among the datasets, the interannual variability in tree ring simulations is insensitive to dataset choice, likely because daily-scale biases are averaged out through accumulated growth across several months. However, inaccuracies in temperature and precipitation can significantly bias modeled xylem cell production, with systematically higher annual precipitation in the gridded datasets leading to greater xylem production compared to simulations using in situ data. Our results suggest that model applications, especially those that integrate to time scales longer than one day, are likely insensitive to climate dataset choice, but applications that are sensitive to daily climate variations or to absolute climate values need to carefully consider biases in gridded climate products.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Oxygen Isotopes in Tree Rings Track Neotropical Climate Dynamics

  Geophysical Research Letters · 2026-02-16

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Central America faces increasing risks from climate variability and extreme weather events. Limited observational records and model biases have constrained our ability to understand the ocean–atmosphere dynamics that influence precipitation variability in the region over longer timescales. Paleoclimate proxies, including the stable oxygen isotope ratio of the cellulose of tropical trees, can extend the climate record, allowing recent trends and variability to be evaluated in a long‐term context and improving our understanding of forced and unforced variability of the climate system. Here, we present a new multidecadal record of tree‐ring from Abies guatemalensis (Guatemalan Fir) from Guatemala and Honduras. We demonstrate that this proxy records boreal summer rainfall and is tightly coupled to neotropical ocean–atmosphere dynamics. This precisely dated, high‐resolution proxy can be used for multicentury hydroclimate reconstructions of the Intertropical Convergence Zone dynamics and its interactions with the eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea.

  PublisherDOI

• Vaganov Shashkin Model (VSM) in R: version 1.0.1

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2026-01-09

  otherOpen access

  VSM in R

  PublisherDOI

• Vaganov Shashkin Model (VSM) in R: version 1.0.1

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2026-01-09 · 1 citations

  otherOpen access

  VSM in R

  PublisherDOI

• Multiple Elevation‐Dependent Climate Signals From Quantitative Wood Anatomical Measurements of Rocky Mountain Bristlecone Pine

  Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences · 2025-01-01 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Southwestern North America has experienced significant temperature increases over the last century, leading to intensified droughts that significantly affect montane forests. Although tree‐ring data have provided long‐term context for this recent drought severity, the varying physiological responses of trees to climate variability make it challenging to disentangle the combined influence of temperature and soil moisture. Here we investigate complex climate‐growth relationships in Rocky Mountain bristlecone pine ( Pinus aristata ) at a low‐elevation and a high‐elevation site using quantitative wood anatomy (QWA). Significant correlations with climate were found for low‐elevation tree‐ring width (TRW) and earlywood chronologies, including positive correlations with spring and early summer precipitation and drought indices and negative correlations with spring and early summer maximum temperatures. At high elevations, TRW and earlywood chronologies show positive responses to summer moisture, whereas latewood chronologies correlate positively with August and September maximum temperatures and negatively with August precipitation. We leverage this differing seasonality of moisture and temperature signals and compare the QWA data to known droughts. The earlywood lumen area is found to be highly responsive to drought because of its physiological reliance on water availability for maintaining turgor pressure during cell enlargement. We also observed a decline in temperature sensitivity at the high elevation site, suggesting shifts in the dominance of limiting factors. Integrating QWA with traditional dendrochronology improves interpretations of tree‐ring data for use in climate reconstruction, offering detailed insights into tree physiological responses and the mix of environmental and developmental controls on cell growth.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Resolution and Frequency‐Dependent Climate Signals in an Arctic Tree‐Ring Temperature Reconstruction of the Last Millennium

  Geophysical Research Letters · 2025-10-28 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Paleoclimatology makes it possible to place recent climate changes in a longer‐term context than is available from the instrumental record. Tree‐ring reconstructions, often used to quantify temperature variations over the Common Era, contain multiple uncertainties that affect estimates of the magnitude of recent trends and past variability. The use of maximum latewood density (MXD) proxy mitigates many biases, but intra‐annual measurement resolution remains a limitation. We develop a quantitative wood anatomy (QWA)‐based temperature reconstruction from the Firth River in northeastern Alaska from 1150 CE to 2021 CE to improve regional past temperature estimates and to test the sensitivity of MXD‐based climate reconstructions to measurement constraints. We find that high‐resolution wood‐anatomy measurements reduce biological noise and enhance the representation of low‐frequency variability, resulting in stronger temperature signals and a larger magnitude of preindustrial to modern change. QWA data provide novel high‐resolution information that improves tree‐ring temperature reconstructions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Annual Chronology and Climate Signals in <i>Swietenia macrophylla</i> and <i>Cedrela odorata</i> (Meliaceae) in the Maya Lowlands

  Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology · 2025-01-01 · 3 citations

  article

  Abstract Despite efforts over recent decades, a gap persists in the global network of tree‐ring chronologies in the tropical Americas and especially for low‐elevation sites. This gap can be attributed to the inherent challenges in identifying tropical species well‐suited for dendrochronology that form reliably annual rings. Even when seasonal growth rhythms do exist, properly distinguishing true annual boundaries from false rings and identifying any locally absent rings can make the process of visually crossdating lowland tropical species extremely challenging. Here, we combine traditional dendrochronological techniques with high‐precision radiocarbon bomb‐pulse dating and wood anatomical analysis to confirm annual ring formation in Cedrela odorata L and Swietenia macrophylla King (Meliaceae) in the northern Maya lowlands of Guatemala. Our findings indicate annual ring formation in both species, but the radiocarbon measurements also indicated an initial misdating due to the anatomical challenges encountered during visual and graphical crossdating. We demonstrate how the iterative use of dendrochronological, wood anatomical, and radiocarbon methods allowed us to correct, validate and assign exact calendar dates to our tree‐ring series. Once the exact chronology was established, we found that tree‐ring width in both species is influenced by precipitation during June, July and August, which coincides with the timing of the Midsummer Drought in the Central American precipitation regime. Successfully demonstrating annual tree growth periodicity in Cedrela odorata and Swietenia macrophylla establishes the groundwork for future tree‐ring research, including climate reconstructions, as well as the potential to develop annually resolved records in the lowlands of Central America.

  PublisherDOI

• Complexity and mediating factors in farmers’ climate perceptions and agricultural adaptation strategies in the Guatemalan Dry Corridor

  Climatic Change · 2025-07-01 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Simultaneous Optimal Target Season Estimation and Local Climate Reconstruction Using Tree Rings

  Geophysical Research Letters · 2025-08-28 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Tree rings provide a natural archive of past environmental variability and are a valuable resource for paleoclimate reconstructions of the Common Era. However, tree rings typically only provide climate information during a portion of the year and uncertainty in the seasonality of climate influence on the proxy formation adds to the challenge of separating climatic signal from non‐climatic noise. We propose a Bayesian hierarchical model for the simultaneous estimation of a target reconstruction season and reconstruction of local climate. We estimate the target reconstruction season through the introduction of latent monthly weights, whose priors can be adjusted to reflect expert knowledge. Model behavior is explored using pseudoproxy experiments and applications to tree‐ring chronologies with known seasonal biases. Our proposed model provides meaningful information about the true growth‐determining season of the proxy and leads to improved uncertainty quantification while retaining overall model skill.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Using reduced-complexity volcanic aerosol and climate models to produce large ensemble simulations of Holocene temperature

  Climate of the past · 2025-10-20 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract. Volcanic eruptions are one of the most important drivers of climate variability, but climate model simulations typically show stronger surface cooling than proxy-based reconstructions. Uncertainties associated with eruption source parameters, aerosol–climate modelling, and internal climate variability might explain those discrepancies, but their quantification using complex global climate models is computationally expensive. In this study, we combine a reduced-complexity volcanic aerosol model (EVA_H) and a climate model (FaIR) to simulate global-mean surface temperature from 6755 BCE to 1900 CE (8705 to 50 BP) accounting for volcanic forcing, solar irradiance, orbital, ice sheet, greenhouse gases, land-use forcing, and anthropogenic aerosols and ozone forcing for the historical period (1750–1900 CE). The negligible computational cost of the models enables us to use a Monte Carlo approach to propagate uncertainties associated with eruption source parameters, aerosol and climate modelling, and internal climate variability. Averaging over the last 9000 years, we obtain a global-mean volcanic forcing of −0.15 W m−2 and an associated surface cooling of 0.12 K. Averaged over the 14 largest eruptions (injecting more than 20 Tg of SO2) of 1250–1900 CE, the mean temperature response in tree-ring-based reconstructions is in good agreement with the our simulations, scaled to Northern Hemisphere summer temperature. For individual eruptions, discrepancies between the simulated and reconstructed surface temperature response are almost always within uncertainties. At multimillennial timescales, our simulations reproduce the Holocene global warming trend typically derived from simulations and data assimilation products but exhibit some discrepancies on centennial to millennial timescales. In particular, the Medieval Climate Anomaly to Little Ice Age transition is weaker in our simulations, and we also do not capture a relatively cool period between 3000 and 1000 BCE (5000 and 3000 BP), visible in climate reanalyses. We discuss how uncertainties in land-use forcing and model limitations might explain these differences. Our study demonstrates the value of reduced-complexity volcanic aerosol–climate models to simulate climate at annual to multimillennial timescales.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: Reconstructing Droughts in the Tropical Americas Using Tree-Ring Analysis

  NSF · $289k · 2013–2016

• Collaborative Research: P2C2--Past and Future Drought Variability in the Mediterranean Basin

  NSF · $68k · 2013–2015

• P2C2: Spatiotemporal Variability in Western United States Snowpack During the Common Era

  NSF · $397k · 2018–2024

• Collaborative Research: P2C2--2000 Years of Variability in the Southern Annular Mode from Tree Rings and Ice

  NSF · $150k · 2019–2023

• Collaborative Research: P2C2--Reconstructing Changes in Asian Monsoon Circulation during the Last Millennium from Stable Isotopes in Tropical Tree Rings

  NSF · $688k · 2012–2016

Frequent coauthors

• Edward R. Cook

  Columbia University

  114 shared

• Rob Wilson

  University of St Andrews

  99 shared

• Laia Andreu‐Hayles

  Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory

  98 shared

• Benjamin I. Cook

  Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory

  97 shared

• Rosanne D’Arrigo

  Columbia University

  96 shared

• Nicole Davi

  William Paterson University

  72 shared

• Michael N. Evans

  71 shared

• Julien Emile‐Geay

  University of Southern California

  54 shared

Education

• PhD, Geosciences

  University of Arizona

  2007