In this gee-whiz science and great outdoors piece, an expert in tree-ring research shares some of the details of what trees can tell us — and whether or not their rings can reveal their age.

By analyzing the tree rings from the timber used to build the ship, they establish that the ship’s planks were cut in the winter of 1448-1449. Photograph by Marc Steinmetz, VISUM/Redux.

Last year, we wrote about a real climate science debate taking place between researchers who look at tree ring records of past climate. Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann, well-known for ...

Tom Swetnam says tree rings tell the tale of how climate, fire and people interacted hundreds and thousands of years ago. Today that interaction continues, and Swetnam says climate change is ...

Tree rings provide evidence for what he calls mega-droughts, more intense and long-lasting than any of the 20th century — worse even than the devastating Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s.

High radiocarbon levels in the rings of subfossil tree stumps suggest that an incomprehensibly powerful solar storm, known as a "Miyake event," smashed into our planet more than 14 millennia ago.