Late Glacial 14C Ages from a Floating, 1382-Ring Pine Chronology

TLDR: In this paper, a floating, 1382-ring pine chronology covering the radiocarbon age interval of 12,000 to 10,650 BP was built based on the strong rise of ∆14C at the onset of the Younger Dryas (YD) and wiggle-matching of the decadal scale ∆ 14C fluc- tuations.

Abstract: We built a floating, 1382-ring pine chronology covering the radiocarbon age interval of 12,000 to 10,650 BP. Based on the strong rise of ∆14C at the onset of the Younger Dryas (YD) and wiggle-matching of the decadal-scale ∆14C fluc- tuations, we can anchor the floating chronology to the Cariaco varve chronology. We observe a marine reservoir correction higher than hitherto assumed for the Cariaco site, of up to 650 yr instead of 400 yr, for the full length of the comparison inter- val. The tree-ring ∆14C shows several strong fluctuations of short duration (a few decades) at 13,800; 13,600; and 13,350 cal BP. The amplitude of the strong ∆14C rise at the onset of the YD is about 40‰, whereas in the marine data set the signal appears stronger due to a re-adjustment of the marine mixed-layer ∆14C towards the atmospheric level.