Recent increases in temperature over the semi-arid western United States have been shown to exacerbate drought, reducing streamflow, and increasing stress on ecosystems. Our understanding of the role temperature played during drought in the more distant past is far from complete. While numerous tree-ring proxy records of moisture provide evidence for past extreme droughts in this region, few contemporaneous tree-ring proxy records of temperatures exist. This limits our ability to evaluate the variable influence of temperature on drought over past centuries and to contextualize the present interplay of moisture and temperature during more recent drought events. It is also important to understand the complexity of climatic interactions that produced drought under natural variability prior to evaluating the potential impacts of future climate change. In response to this knowledge gap, we undertook the first extensive evaluation of climate sensitivity in Rocky Mountain bristlecone pine (Pinus aristata Engelm.), focusing on the potential for developing new multi-century proxy records of both temperature and precipitation. We isolated dominant patterns of growth variability among trees from ten ring-width datasets across the Southern Rocky Mountains of Colorado and New Mexico and assessed their response to climate. We utilized both an empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis and a modified form of hierarchical cluster analysis to produce time series representing growth patterns in P. aristata. The results indicate a widespread June drought stress signal with a high potential for multi-millennial reconstruction. We also found a positive minimum temperature response during late summer, evident only at lower frequency and co-occurring at locations with the June drought stress signal. The potential for temperature reconstruction will require further investigation into the physiological linkages between P. aristata and climate variability. The presence of multiple climate responses within P. aristata sampling sites highlights the need for particular care when including P. aristata in regional climate reconstructions.

美国西部半干旱地区最近出现的气温升高已表明加剧了干旱，减少了径流量并增加了对生态系统的压力。我们对温度在更遥远的干旱期间所起的作用的了解还远远不够。尽管大量的树年轮代用记录为该地区过去的极端干旱提供了证据，但很少有同时期的树年轮代用记录。这限制了我们评估温度在过去几个世纪中对干旱的可变影响以及在最近的干旱事件中将水分和温度之间的当前相互关系背景化的能力。在评估未来气候变化的潜在影响之前，了解自然相互作用下导致干旱的气候相互作用的复杂性也很重要。（Pinus aristata Engelm。），着重于开发新的关于温度和降水的多世纪代用记录的潜力。我们从科罗拉多州落基山脉和新墨西哥州的十个环宽数据集中的树木中，确定了树木中生长变异的主要模式，并评估了它们对气候的响应。我们利用经验正交函数（EOF）分析和改进的层次聚类分析形式，来产生代表P. aristata生长模式的时间序列。。结果表明，广泛的6月干旱胁迫信号具有很高的跨千年重建潜力。我们还发现夏季末的最低温度响应为正，仅在较低频率下才明显，并且在与六月干旱胁迫信号同时发生的地方同时出现。温度重建的潜力将需要进一步研究拟南芥与气候变异性之间的生理联系。在P. aristata采样点内存在多种气候响应，这凸显了在将P. aristata纳入区域气候重建中时需要特别注意的问题。