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Science 1 October 1982:
Vol. 218. no. 4567, pp. 13 - 19
DOI: 10.1126/science.218.4567.13
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Articles

Banded Corals: Changes in Oceanic Carbon-14 During the Little Ice Age

Ellen M. Druffel 1

1 Assistant scientist in the Department of Chemistry, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Massachusetts 02543

Radiocarbon analyses and stable isotope measurements are presented foro recent cores of banded corals from the Florida Straits. These values provide a record of variations in the ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 in the dissolved inorganic carbon in the surface waters of the Gulf Stream from A.D. 1642 to 1800. An increase in the carbon-14/carbon-12 ratio of 7 per mil for coral growth during the early 1700's was most likely induced by an increase in the carbon-14/carbon-12 ratio of 20 per mil in the atmospheric carbon dioxide that occurred at about 1700. The ratios of oxygen 18 to oxygen-16 in these coral bands show a small decrease of a water temperature (sim1°C) during the latter part of the Little Ice Age (1700 to 1725). These results support the hypothesis that the increase in atmospheric carbon-14 at about 1700, and possibly the temperature change as well, was caused by a decrease in solar activity (Maunder sunspot minimum).


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
The Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period in the Sargasso Sea.
L. D. Keigwin (1996)
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N. Knowlton, N. KNOWLTON, E. WEIL, L. A. WEIGT, and H. M. GUZMAN (1992)
Science 255, 330-333
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El Nino Southern Oscillation influences in the Australasian region.
R. J. Allan (1988)
Progress in Physical Geography 12, 313-348
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