A group of researchers is turning to the world's longest-lived organisms--the bristlecone pine--for signs of how the world's climate has changed in the past.

Because of the trees' longevity, core samples taken from them are extremely useful in reconstructing the temperature and climate data for periods long before modern data began to be tabulated. A team of paleoclimatologists from the University of Arizona, along with a Western Washington University professor and some WWU undergraduate students, is studying the trees in their natural habitat--high atop California's White Mountains at roughly 11,000 feet above sea level.

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