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Originally published in Science Express on 10 May 2007
Science 8 June 2007:
Vol. 316. no. 5830, pp. 1456 - 1459
DOI: 10.1126/science.1138679
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Research Articles

Marine Radiocarbon Evidence for the Mechanism of Deglacial Atmospheric CO2 Rise

Thomas M. Marchitto,1,2*{dagger} Scott J. Lehman,1,2* Joseph D. Ortiz,3 Jacqueline Flückiger,2{ddagger} Alexander van Geen4

We reconstructed the radiocarbon activity of intermediate waters in the eastern North Pacific over the past 38,000 years. Radiocarbon activity paralleled that of the atmosphere, except during deglaciation, when intermediate-water values fell by more than 300 per mil. Such a large decrease requires a deglacial injection of very old waters from a deep-ocean carbon reservoir that was previously well isolated from the atmosphere. The timing of intermediate-water radiocarbon depletion closely matches that of atmospheric carbon dioxide rise and effectively traces the redistribution of carbon from the deep ocean to the atmosphere during deglaciation.

1 Department of Geological Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.
2 Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.
3 Department of Geology, Kent State University, Kent, OH 44242, USA.
4 Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, Palisades, NY 10964, USA.

* These authors contributed equally to this work.

{ddagger} Present address: Environmental Physics, Institute of Biochemistry and Pollutant Dynamics, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland.

{dagger} To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: tom.marchitto{at}colorado.edu

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