By Kylie Stott
Known in Spanish as the alerce, the Patagonian cypress grows extremely slowly, but can reach heights over 50 meters (165 feet) and live for 2,000 years or more, putting some of them among the oldest living things on earth.
Argentine geoscientist Ricardo Villalba, a contributor to the Nobel Prize-winning United Nations report on climate change last year, studies what the ancient trees say about changing weather patterns.
"This has allowed us to see that in some sectors of Patagonia, the year 1998 was the hottest in the last 400 years," Villalba said during a recent expedition.
The tree rings show that temperatures in the 20th Century were "anomalously warm" across the southern Andes. At their worst, mean temperatures over the last century went up 0.86 degree Celsius (1.5 degrees Fahrenheit) when compared to temperatures in the previous 260 years.
At the nearby Puerto Blest Biological Research Station, Villalba has been able to compare his results with those of other leading scientists.
The scientists have also been able to use their proxy data to test computer models used for predicting climate changes in the future.
Tree rings also provide a long-term perspective in the climate change debate, such as in the question of whether global warming is a result of human activity or is part of a natural earth cycle.
And the alerces still have a lot more information to provide.
When these chronologies are fully compiled, they could provide a new source of data currently only available from ice core samples, ocean sediments and ancient pollen.
(Reporting by Kylie Scott; Editing by Eddie Evans)
