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Science 9 June 2006:
Vol. 312. no. 5779, pp. 1514 - 1517
DOI: 10.1126/science.1123300
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Reports

Changes in North Atlantic Radiocarbon Reservoir Ages During the Allerød and Younger Dryas

Stein Bondevik,1* Jan Mangerud,2 Hilary H. Birks,3 Steinar Gulliksen,4 Paula Reimer5

Estimates of the radiocarbon age of seawater are required in correlations between marine and terrestrial records of the late Quaternary climate. We radiocarbon-dated marine shells and terrestrial plant remains deposited in two bays on Norway's west coast between 11,000 and 14,000 years ago, a time of large and abrupt climatic changes that included the Younger Dryas (YD) cold episode. The radiocarbon age difference between the shells and the plants showed that sea surface reservoir ages increased from 400 to 600 years in the early YD, stabilized for 900 years, and dropped by 300 years within a century across the YD-Holocene transition.

1 Department of Geology, University of Tromsø, N-9037 Tromsø, Norway.
2 Department of Earth Science and Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research,
3 Department of Biology and Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, University of Bergen, Allégaten 41, N-5007 Bergen, Norway.
4 Radiological Dating Laboratory, Sem Sælandsvei 5, N-7034 Trondheim, Norway.
5 School of Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast BT7 1NN, UK.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: stein.bondevik{at}ig.uit.no

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)