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Palaeoclimate

Tree rings floating on ice cores

Nature Geoscience volume 1, pages 218–219 (2008)Cite this article

Because of difficulties in creating a radiocarbon calibration that covers the end of the last glaciation, defining the timing and duration of the Younger Dryas cold event has been a challenge. Linking related cosmogenic isotopes in tree rings and ice cores may provide new insights into abrupt climate changes.

Radiocarbon measurements on tree rings of known age are considered the gold standard for converting terrestrial radiocarbon ages to calendar years. This is necessary for estimating absolute dates because atmospheric radiocarbon content has varied over time, and therefore the initial radiocarbon content of a sample can not be known precisely. However so far, there are no absolutely dated tree-ring records that span the end of the last glaciation (20,000 to 10,000 years ago), a period when large and rapid climate changes such as the Younger Dryas cold reversal occurred. Several tree-ring time series of radiocarbon approximately spanning the last deglaciation have been constructed. However, the dating of these time series is not directly linked to the present, and they are therefore termed 'floating'. On page 263 of this issue, Muscheler and co-authors1 provide a firmer timescale for a floating tree-ring chronology from the Younger Dryas period, by anchoring it to a Greenland ice core.

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Figure 1: Comparison of two calibrations of a hypothetical radiocarbon-dated event.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The 14CHRONO Centre for Climate, the Environment & Chronology, School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, BT7 1NN, UK

    Paula J. Reimer

  2. Department of Marine Chemistry & Geochemistry, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, 02543, Massachusetts, USA

    Konrad A. Hughen

Authors
  1. Paula J. Reimer
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  2. Konrad A. Hughen
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Reimer, P., Hughen, K. Tree rings floating on ice cores. Nature Geosci 1, 218–219 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo167

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