Scientists study global warming's effect on California redwoods

Over the next three years, the team members, funded by Save the Redwoods League in San Francisco, are climbing immense redwoods and sequoias at 13 locations as part of the $2.5 million project.
...As part of the "Redwoods and Climate Change Initiative," he and his colleagues are making 3-D computer models of several trees at each site, meticulously measuring their girth every 15 feet, their bark, every branch larger than 2 inches in diameter, even the number of cones.
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Redwoods have been around for 120 million years or more. They once lived side by side with dinosaurs, across wide ranges through Canada, Utah, Montana and Southern California.
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"These trees have seen climate change before. But they haven't seen it the way they are seeing it now."
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Climate change is already under way. The 10 hottest years since 1880, when modern temperature measurements began, all have occurred since 1998, according to the National Climatic Data Center.
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As part of the project, Dawson takes thin core samples of the trees, and then analyzes the isotopes of carbon and oxygen in the tree rings. Using that data he can measure wood production, the amount of carbon the trees store and annual growth, and can document monthly climate conditions centuries ago and how trees responded.

Flashback: A New Leaderboard at the U.S. Open « Climate Audit

Four of the top 10 are now from the 1930s: 1934, 1931, 1938 and 1939, while only 3 of the top 10 are from the last 10 years (1998, 2006, 1999). Several years (2000, 2002, 2003, 2004) fell well down the leaderboard, behind even 1900.