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Short‐term fluctuations in regional radiocarbon reservoir age recorded in coral skeletons from the Ryukyu Islands in the north‐western Pacific
Author(s) -
Hirabayashi Shoko,
Yokoyama Yusuke,
Suzuki Atsushi,
Miyairi Yosuke,
Aze Takahiro
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
journal of quaternary science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.142
H-Index - 94
eISSN - 1099-1417
pISSN - 0267-8179
DOI - 10.1002/jqs.2923
Subject(s) - radiocarbon dating , geology , coral , oceanography , period (music) , pacific decadal oscillation , paleoclimatology , absolute dating , pacific ocean , paleontology , physical geography , geography , climate change , physics , acoustics
Radiocarbon ( 14 C) dating is a widely used and powerful tool for determining the ages of samples in studies of palaeoclimatology, palaeoseismology and archaeology. 14 C ages of marine samples often require correction for local reservoir age (Δ R ). Although Δ R in the mid‐ to low latitudes has varied through time, few spatiotemporal reconstructions of Δ R have been published for those regions. Here we report on new and previously published Δ R data for the early 1900s to 1950 obtained from coral skeletons from the Kuroshio region off southern Japan. The data presented here show a marked positive‐to‐negative shift of Δ R from the early 1900s to the 1940s, which has important implications for calibration of radiocarbon ages in the region and for understanding the relationship of Δ R in the western Pacific with both the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.