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Reply to: Possible magmatic CO2 influence on the Laacher See eruption date

Nature volume 619, pages E3–E8 (2023)Cite this article

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The Original Article was published on 05 July 2023

replying to J. U. L. Baldini et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-05965-1 (2023)

We agree with Baldini et al.1 that the Laacher See tephra (LST) is a key Late Pleistocene chronostratigraphic unit across much of Europe. We also agree that the LST needs to be dated precisely to synchronize proxy archives and to better understand climate and environmental changes during the Late Glacial period. However, we disagree that our radiocarbon (14C) measurements from three subfossil trees killed and buried at different locations by the pyroclastic deposits of the Laacher See eruption (LSE)2 are possibly affected by outgassing magmatic carbon dioxide (CO2). Although the release of CO2 from active volcanic systems can influence 14C values3, we here provide both relict and modern radiocarbon evidence to demonstrate why our LSE date of 13,006 ± 9 calibrated years before present (bp; taken as ad 1950) is correct.

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Fig. 1: New Δ14C measurements from living beech trees at the eastern shore of the Laacher See.

Data availability

The data used for this study are provided with this paper or are available from the references cited.

References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany

    Frederick Reinig & Jan Esper

  2. Laboratory of Ion Beam Physics, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Lukas Wacker & Adam Sookdeo

  3. Leibniz-Zentrum für Archäologie–MONREPOS Archaeological Research Centre and Museum for Human Behavioural Evolution, Neuwied, Germany

    Olaf Jöris

  4. Institute of Ancient Studies, Department of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Archaeology, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany

    Olaf Jöris

  5. Key Laboratory of Western China’s Environmental Systems (Ministry of Education), College of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China

    Olaf Jöris

  6. Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Clive Oppenheimer, Christine Lane & Ulf Büntgen

  7. Forest Dynamics/Dendrosciences, Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, Birmensdorf, Switzerland

    Giulia Guidobaldi, Daniel Nievergelt, Paolo Cherubini & Ulf Büntgen

  8. Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, Germany

    Florian Adolphi

  9. Department of Geosciences, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany

    Florian Adolphi

  10. Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

    Paolo Cherubini

  11. Department of Geography, Birkbeck University of London, London, UK

    Stefan Engels

  12. Institute of Earth Sciences, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

    Frank Keppler

  13. Heidelberg Center for the Environment, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

    Frank Keppler

  14. Institute of Biology (190a), University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany

    Alexander Land & Sabine Remmele

  15. Silviculture & Forest Growth and Yield, University of Applied Forest Sciences, Rottenburg am Neckar, Germany

    Alexander Land

  16. Institute of Applied Botanics and Volcanic Biology, Universität Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany

    Hardy Pfanz

  17. Climate and Environmental Physics, Physics Institute, Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Michael Sigl

  18. Global Change Research Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences (CzechGlobe), Brno, Czech Republic

    Ulf Büntgen

  19. Department of Geography, Faculty of Science, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

    Ulf Büntgen

Authors
  1. Frederick Reinig
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  2. Lukas Wacker
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  3. Olaf Jöris
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  4. Clive Oppenheimer
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  5. Giulia Guidobaldi
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  6. Daniel Nievergelt
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  7. Florian Adolphi
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  8. Paolo Cherubini
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  9. Stefan Engels
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  10. Jan Esper
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  11. Frank Keppler
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  12. Alexander Land
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  13. Christine Lane
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  14. Hardy Pfanz
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  15. Sabine Remmele
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  16. Michael Sigl
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  17. Adam Sookdeo
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  18. Ulf Büntgen
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Contributions

F.R., O.J., J.E. and U.B. wrote the Reply with input from all authors. F.K. provide material for modern radiocarbon measurements, which L.W. measured.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Frederick Reinig.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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Extended data figures and tables

Extended Data Fig. 1 Late Glacial radiocarbon (14C) data.

High-resolution Laacher See 14C measurements from three tree-ring sequences (a-c) recovered from LST deposits and wiggle-matched to the Swiss Late Glacial reference SWILM-14C on the 14C timescale, cal BP (1950)2. Data are shown with 1σ errors.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Modern radiocarbon (14C) data.

Comparison of Laacher See Δ14C measurements of dendrochronologically dated living beech trees (colored circles) growing at the eastern shore of Laacher See in the immediate vicinity of CO2 fumaroles to reference measurements from Hohenpeißenberg, Bavaria, and the IntCal20 calibration curve (shaded grey line; ref. 10) over the period from 1950 to 2020 (a) and details of selected periods of measurements (b-d).

Extended Data Table 1 Selected radiocarbon (14C) dates from samples stratigraphically near the Laacher See tephra (LST) and shortly before the Laacher See Eruption (LSE)
Full size table
Extended Data Table 2 Radiocarbon results from living beech trees growing at the eastern shore of Laacher See in the immediate vicinity of CO2 fumaroles and reference measurements from Hohenpeißenberg, Bavaria, Germany
Full size table

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Reinig, F., Wacker, L., Jöris, O. et al. Reply to: Possible magmatic CO2 influence on the Laacher See eruption date. Nature 619, E3–E8 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-05966-0

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