Search

Our paper about the impacts of the Laschamps Geomagnetic Excursion 42,000 years ago has provoked considerable scientific and public interest, particularly in the so-called Adams Event associated with the initial transition of the magnetic poles. Although we welcome the opportunity to discuss our new ideas, Hawks' assertions of misrepresentation are especially disappointing given his limited examination of the material.

Geological archives record multiple reversals of Earth’s magnetic poles, but the global impacts of these events, if any, remain unclear. Uncertain radiocarbon calibration has limited investigation of the potential effects of the last major magnetic inversion, known as the Laschamps Excursion [41 to 42 thousand years ago (ka)]. We use ancient New Zealand kauri trees (Agathis australis) to develop a detailed record of atmospheric radiocarbon levels across the Laschamps Excursion. We precisely characterize the geomagnetic reversal and perform global chemistry-climate modeling and detailed radiocarbon dating of paleoenvironmental records to investigate impacts. We find that geomagnetic field minima ~42 ka, in combination with Grand Solar Minima, caused substantial changes in atmospheric ozone concentration and circulation, driving synchronous global climate shifts that caused major environmental changes, extinction events, and transformations in the archaeological record.

© The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Reimer, P. J., Austin, W. E. N., Bard, E., Bayliss, A., Blackwell, P. G., Ramsey, C. B., Butzin, M., Cheng, H., Edwards, R. L., Friedrich, M., Grootes, P. M., Guilderson, T. P., Hajdas, I., Heaton, T. J., Hogg, A. G., Hughen, K. A., Kromer, B., Manning, S. W., Muscheler, R., Palmer, J. G., Pearson, C., van der Plicht, J., Reimer, R. W., Richards, D. A., Scott, E. M., Southon, J. R., Turney, C. S. M., Wacker, L., Adolphi, F., Buentgen, U., Capano, M., Fahrni, S. M., Fogtmann-Schulz, A., Friedrich, R., Koehler, P., Kudsk, S., Miyake, F., Olsen, J., Reinig, F., Sakamoto, M., Sookdeo, A., & Talamo, S. The Intcal20 Northern Hemisphere radiocarbon age calibration curve (0-55 cal kBP). Radiocarbon, 62(4), (2020): 725-757, doi:10.1017/RDC.2020.41., Radiocarbon (14C) ages cannot provide absolutely dated chronologies for archaeological or paleoenvironmental studies directly but must be converted to calendar age equivalents using a calibration curve compensating for fluctuations in atmospheric 14C concentration. Although calibration curves are constructed from independently dated archives, they invariably require revision as new data become available and our understanding of the Earth system improves. In this volume the international 14C calibration curves for both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, as well as for the ocean surface layer, have been updated to include a wealth of new data and extended to 55,000 cal BP. Based on tree rings, IntCal20 now extends as a fully atmospheric record to ca. 13,900 cal BP. For the older part of the timescale, IntCal20 comprises statistically integrated evidence from floating tree-ring chronologies, lacustrine and marine sediments, speleothems, and corals. We utilized improved evaluation of the timescales and location variable 14C offsets from the atmosphere (reservoir age, dead carbon fraction) for each dataset. New statistical methods have refined the structure of the calibration curves while maintaining a robust treatment of uncertainties in the 14C ages, the calendar ages and other corrections. The inclusion of modeled marine reservoir ages derived from a three-dimensional ocean circulation model has allowed us to apply more appropriate reservoir corrections to the marine 14C data rather than the previous use of constant regional offsets from the atmosphere. Here we provide an overview of the new and revised datasets and the associated methods used for the construction of the IntCal20 curve and explore potential regional offsets for tree-ring data. We discuss the main differences with respect to the previous calibration curve, IntCal13, and some of the implications for archaeology and geosciences ranging from the recent past to the time of the extinction of the Neander, We would like to thank the National Natural Science Foundation of China grants NSFC 41888101 and NSFC 41731174, the 111 program of China (D19002), U.S. NSF Grant 1702816, and the Malcolm H. Wiener Foundation for support for research that contributed to the IntCal20 curve. The work on the Swiss and German YD trees was funded by the German Science foundation and the Swiss National Foundation (grant number: 200021L_157187). The operation in Aix-en-Provence is funded by the EQUIPEX ASTER-CEREGE, the Collège de France and the ANR project CARBOTRYDH (to EB). The work on the correlation of tree ring 14C with ice core 10Be was partially supported by the Swedish Research Council and the Knut and Alice Wallenberg foundation. M. Butzin was supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as Research for Sustainable Development (FONA; http://www.fona.de) through the PalMod project (grant number: 01LP1505B). S. Talamo and M. Friedrich are funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (grant agreement No. 803147-RESOLUTION, awarded to ST). CA. Turney would like to acknowledge support of the Australian Research Council (FL100100195 and DP170104665). P. Reimer and W. Austin acknowledge the support of the UKRI Natural Environment Research Council (Grant NE/M004619/1). T.J. Heaton is supported by a Leverhulme Trust Fellowship RF-2019-140\9. Other datasets and the IntCal20 database were created without external support through internal funding by the respective laboratories. We also would like to thank various institutions that provided funding or facilities for meetings.

Radiocarbon (14C), as a consequence of its production in the atmosphere and subsequent dispersal through the carbon cycle, is a key tracer for studying the Earth system. Knowledge of past 14C levels improves our understanding of climate processes, the Sun, the geodynamo, and the carbon cycle. Recently updated radiocarbon calibration curves (IntCal20, SHCal20, and Marine20) provide unprecedented accuracy in our estimates of 14C levels back to the limit of the 14C technique (~55,000 years ago). Such improved detail creates new opportunities to probe the Earth and climate system more reliably and at finer scale. We summarize the advances that have underpinned this revised set of radiocarbon calibration curves, survey the broad scientific landscape where additional detail on past 14C provides insight, and identify open challenges for the future.

© The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Heaton, T. J., Koehler, P., Butzin, M., Bard, E., Reimer, R. W., Austin, W. E. N., Ramsey, C. B., Grootes, P. M., Hughen, K. A., Kromer, B., Reimer, P. J., Adkins, J., Burke, A., Cook, M. S., Olsen, J., & Skinner, L. C. Marine20-the marine radiocarbon age calibration curve (0-55,000 cal BP). Radiocarbon, 62(4), (2020): 779-820, doi:10.1017/RDC.2020.68., The concentration of radiocarbon (14C) differs between ocean and atmosphere. Radiocarbon determinations from samples which obtained their 14C in the marine environment therefore need a marine-specific calibration curve and cannot be calibrated directly against the atmospheric-based IntCal20 curve. This paper presents Marine20, an update to the internationally agreed marine radiocarbon age calibration curve that provides a non-polar global-average marine record of radiocarbon from 0–55 cal kBP and serves as a baseline for regional oceanic variation. Marine20 is intended for calibration of marine radiocarbon samples from non-polar regions; it is not suitable for calibration in polar regions where variability in sea ice extent, ocean upwelling and air-sea gas exchange may have caused larger changes to concentrations of marine radiocarbon. The Marine20 curve is based upon 500 simulations with an ocean/atmosphere/biosphere box-model of the global carbon cycle that has been forced by posterior realizations of our Northern Hemispheric atmospheric IntCal20 14C curve and reconstructed changes in CO2 obtained from ice core data. These forcings enable us to incorporate carbon cycle dynamics and temporal changes in the atmospheric 14C level. The box-model simulations of the global-average marine radiocarbon reservoir age are similar to those of a more complex three-dimensional ocean general circulation model. However, simplicity and speed of the box model allow us to use a Monte Carlo approach to rigorously propagate the uncertainty in both the historic concentration of atmospheric 14C and other key parameters of the carbon cycle through to our final Marine20 calibration curve. This robust propagation of uncertainty is fundamental to providing reliable precision for the radiocarbon age calibration of marine based samples. We make a first step towards deconvolving the contributions of different processes to the total uncertainty; discuss the main differences of Marine20 from the, We would like to thank Jeremy Oakley and Richard Bintanja for informative discussions during the development of this work. T.J. Heaton is supported by a Leverhulme Trust Fellowship RF-2019-140\9, “Improving the Measurement of Time Using Radiocarbon”. M Butzin is supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), as Research for Sustainability initiative (FONA); www.fona.de through the PalMod project (grant numbers: 01LP1505B, 01LP1919A). E. Bard is supported by EQUIPEX ASTER-CEREGE and ANR CARBOTRYDH. Meetings of the IntCal Marine Focus group have been supported by Collège de France. Data are available on the PANGAEA database at doi:10.159/ANGAEA.914500.

© The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Reimer, P. J., Austin, W. E. N., Bard, E., Bayliss, A., Blackwell, P. G., Ramsey, C. B., Butzin, M., Cheng, H., Edwards, R. L., Friedrich, M., Grootes, P. M., Guilderson, T. P., Hajdas, I., Heaton, T. J., Hogg, A. G., Hughen, K. A., Kromer, B., Manning, S. W., Muscheler, R., Palmer, J. G., Pearson, C., van der Plicht, J., Reimer, R. W., Richards, D. A., Scott, E. M., Southon, J. R., Turney, C. S. M., Wacker, L., Adolphi, F., Buentgen, U., Capano, M., Fahrni, S. M., Fogtmann-Schulz, A., Friedrich, R., Koehler, P., Kudsk, S., Miyake, F., Olsen, J., Reinig, F., Sakamoto, M., Sookdeo, A., & Talamo, S. The Intcal20 Northern Hemisphere radiocarbon age calibration curve (0-55 cal kBP). Radiocarbon, 62(4), (2020): 725-757, doi:10.1017/RDC.2020.41., Radiocarbon (14C) ages cannot provide absolutely dated chronologies for archaeological or paleoenvironmental studies directly but must be converted to calendar age equivalents using a calibration curve compensating for fluctuations in atmospheric 14C concentration. Although calibration curves are constructed from independently dated archives, they invariably require revision as new data become available and our understanding of the Earth system improves. In this volume the international 14C calibration curves for both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, as well as for the ocean surface layer, have been updated to include a wealth of new data and extended to 55,000 cal BP. Based on tree rings, IntCal20 now extends as a fully atmospheric record to ca. 13,900 cal BP. For the older part of the timescale, IntCal20 comprises statistically integrated evidence from floating tree-ring chronologies, lacustrine and marine sediments, speleothems, and corals. We utilized improved evaluation of the timescales and location variable 14C offsets from the atmosphere (reservoir age, dead carbon fraction) for each dataset. New statistical methods have refined the structure of the calibration curves while maintaining a robust treatment of uncertainties in the 14C ages, the calendar ages and other corrections. The inclusion of modeled marine reservoir ages derived from a three-dimensional ocean circulation model has allowed us to apply more appropriate reservoir corrections to the marine 14C data rather than the previous use of constant regional offsets from the atmosphere. Here we provide an overview of the new and revised datasets and the associated methods used for the construction of the IntCal20 curve and explore potential regional offsets for tree-ring data. We discuss the main differences with respect to the previous calibration curve, IntCal13, and some of the implications for archaeology and geosciences ranging from the recent past to the time of the extinction of the Neander, We would like to thank the National Natural Science Foundation of China grants NSFC 41888101 and NSFC 41731174, the 111 program of China (D19002), U.S. NSF Grant 1702816, and the Malcolm H. Wiener Foundation for support for research that contributed to the IntCal20 curve. The work on the Swiss and German YD trees was funded by the German Science foundation and the Swiss National Foundation (grant number: 200021L_157187). The operation in Aix-en-Provence is funded by the EQUIPEX ASTER-CEREGE, the Collège de France and the ANR project CARBOTRYDH (to EB). The work on the correlation of tree ring 14C with ice core 10Be was partially supported by the Swedish Research Council and the Knut and Alice Wallenberg foundation. M. Butzin was supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as Research for Sustainable Development (FONA; http://www.fona.de) through the PalMod project (grant number: 01LP1505B). S. Talamo and M. Friedrich are funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (grant agreement No. 803147-RESOLUTION, awarded to ST). CA. Turney would like to acknowledge support of the Australian Research Council (FL100100195 and DP170104665). P. Reimer and W. Austin acknowledge the support of the UKRI Natural Environment Research Council (Grant NE/M004619/1). T.J. Heaton is supported by a Leverhulme Trust Fellowship RF-2019-140\9. Other datasets and the IntCal20 database were created without external support through internal funding by the respective laboratories. We also would like to thank various institutions that provided funding or facilities for meetings.

Beyond ~13.9 cal kBP, the IntCal20 radiocarbon (14C) calibration curve is based upon combining data across a range of different archives including corals and planktic foraminifera. In order to reliably incorporate such marine data into an atmospheric curve, we need to resolve these records into their constituent atmospheric signal and marine reservoir age. We present results of marine reservoir age simulations enabling this resolution, applying the LSG ocean general circulation model forced with various climatic background conditions and with atmospheric radiocarbon changes according to the Hulu Cave speleothem record. Simulating the spatiotemporal evolution of reservoir ages between 54,000 and 10,700 cal BP, we find reservoir ages between 500 and 1400 yr in the low- and mid-latitudes, but also more than 3000 yr in the polar seas. Our results are broadly in agreement with available marine radiocarbon reconstructions, with the caveat that continental margins, marginal seas, or tropical lagoons are not properly resolved in our coarse-resolution model.

Radiocarbon (14C) ages cannot provide absolutely dated chronologies for archaeological or paleoenvironmental studies directly but must be converted to calendar age equivalents using a calibration curve compensating for fluctuations in atmospheric 14C concentration. Although calibration curves are constructed from independently dated archives, they invariably require revision as new data become available and our understanding of the Earth system improves. In this volume the international 14C calibration curves for both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, as well as for the ocean surface layer, have been updated to include a wealth of new data and extended to 55,000 cal BP. Based on tree rings, IntCal20 now extends as a fully atmospheric record to ca. 13,900 cal BP. For the older part of the timescale, IntCal20 comprises statistically integrated evidence from floating tree-ring chronologies, lacustrine and marine sediments, speleothems, and corals. We utilized improved evaluation of the timescales and location variable 14C offsets from the atmosphere (reservoir age, dead carbon fraction) for each dataset. New statistical methods have refined the structure of the calibration curves while maintaining a robust treatment of uncertainties in the 14C ages, the calendar ages and other corrections. The inclusion of modeled marine reservoir ages derived from a three-dimensional ocean circulation model has allowed us to apply more appropriate reservoir corrections to the marine 14C data rather than the previous use of constant regional offsets from the atmosphere. Here we provide an overview of the new and revised datasets and the associated methods used for the construction of the IntCal20 curve and explore potential regional offsets for tree-ring data. We discuss the main differences with respect to the previous calibration curve, IntCal13, and some of the implications for archaeology and geosciences ranging from the recent past to the time of the extinction of the Neander

The concentration of radiocarbon (14C) differs between ocean and atmosphere. Radiocarbon determinations from samples which obtained their 14C in the marine environment therefore need a marine-specific calibration curve and cannot be calibrated directly against the atmospheric-based IntCal20 curve. This paper presents Marine20, an update to the internationally agreed marine radiocarbon age calibration curve that provides a non-polar global-average marine record of radiocarbon from 0–55 cal kBP and serves as a baseline for regional oceanic variation. Marine20 is intended for calibration of marine radiocarbon samples from non-polar regions; it is not suitable for calibration in polar regions where variability in sea ice extent, ocean upwelling and air-sea gas exchange may have caused larger changes to concentrations of marine radiocarbon. The Marine20 curve is based upon 500 simulations with an ocean/atmosphere/biosphere box-model of the global carbon cycle that has been forced by posterior realizations of our Northern Hemispheric atmospheric IntCal20 14C curve and reconstructed changes in CO2 obtained from ice core data. These forcings enable us to incorporate carbon cycle dynamics and temporal changes in the atmospheric 14C level. The box-model simulations of the global-average marine radiocarbon reservoir age are similar to those of a more complex three-dimensional ocean general circulation model. However, simplicity and speed of the box model allow us to use a Monte Carlo approach to rigorously propagate the uncertainty in both the historic concentration of atmospheric 14C and other key parameters of the carbon cycle through to our final Marine20 calibration curve. This robust propagation of uncertainty is fundamental to providing reliable precision for the radiocarbon age calibration of marine based samples. We make a first step towards deconvolving the contributions of different processes to the total uncertainty; discuss the main differences of Marine20 from the

Connecting calendar ages to radiocarbon (C-14) ages, i.e. constructing a calibration curve, requires C-14 samples that represent, or are closely connected to, atmospheric C-14 values and that can also be independently dated. In addition to these data, there is information that can serve as independent tests of the calibration curve. For example, information from ice core radionuclide data cannot be directly incorporated into the calibration curve construction as it delivers less direct information on the C-14 age-calendar age relationship but it can provide tests of the quality of the calibration curve. Furthermore, ice core ages on C-14-dated volcanic eruptions provide key information on the agreement of ice core and radiocarbon time scales. Due to their scarcity such data would have little impact if directly incorporated into the calibration curve. However, these serve as important "anchor points" in time for independently testing the calibration curve and/or ice-core time scales. Here we will show that such information largely supports the new IntCal20 calibration record. Furthermore, we discuss how floating tree-ring sequences on ice-core time scales agree with the new calibration curve. For the period around 40,000 years ago we discuss unresolved differences between ice core Be-10 and C-14 records that are possibly related to our limited understanding of carbon cycle influences on the atmospheric C-14 concentration during the last glacial period. Finally, we review the results on the time scale comparison between the Greenland ice-core time scale (GICC05) and IntCal20 that effectively allow a direct comparison of C-14-dated records with the Greenland ice core data.

We present a new record of radiocarbon ages measured by accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) on a deep-sea core collected off the Pakistan Margin. The C-14 ages measured on the planktonic foraminifera Globigerinoides ruber from core MD04-2876 define a high and stable sedimentation rate on the order of 50 cm/kyr over the last 50 kyr. The site is distant from the main upwelling zone of the western Arabian Sea where C-14 reservoir age is large and may be variable. Many independent proxies based on elemental analyses, mineralogy, biomarkers, isotopic proxies, and foraminiferal abundances show abrupt changes correlative with Dansgaard-Oeschger and Heinrich events. It is now common knowledge that these climatic events also affected the Arabian Sea during the last glacial period through changes in the Indian monsoon and in ventilation at intermediate depths. The stratigraphic agreement between all proxies, from fine-to coarse-size fractions, indicates that the foraminiferal C-14 ages are representative of the different sediment fractions. To build a calendar age scale for core MD04-2876, we matched its climate record to the oxygen isotopic (delta O-18) profile of Hulu Cave stalagmites that have been accurately dated by U-Th (Wang et al. 2001; Southon et al. 2012; Edwards et al., submitted). Both archives exhibit very similar signatures, even for century-long events linked to monsoonal variations. For comparison, we have also updated our previous work on core MD95-2042 from the Iberian Margin (Bard et al. 2004a, b, c), whose climate record has likewise been tuned to the high-resolution delta O-18 Hulu Cave profile. Sophisticated and novel statistical techniques were used to interpolate ages and calculate uncertainties between chronological tie-points (Heaton et al. 2013, this issue). The data from the Pakistan and Iberian margins compare well even if they come from distant sites characterized by different oceanic conditions. Collectively, the data also compare well with the