Tree rings
Concentric rings of secondary wood evident in a cross-section of the stem of a woody plant. The difference between the dense, small-celled late wood of one season and the wide-celled early wood of the following spring enables the age of a tree to be estimated, and the ring widths or density can be related to climate parameters such as temperature and precipitation. See Proxy.
Definition courtesy of IPCC AR4.
All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.