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Reply to "Rapid $^{14}$C excursion at 3372-3371 BCE not observed at two different locations"

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2020-03-26 v1 Geophysics

Abstract

The nuclide 14^{14}C can be produced in the atmosphere by high energy particles and γ\gamma-rays from high-energy phenomena. Through the carbon cycle, some of 14^{14}CO2_2 produced in the atmosphere can be retained in annual tree rings. Four events of rapid increase of the 14^{14}C content occurred in AD 775, AD 994, BC 660 and BC 3371 were found. Recently, the data of Jull et al. (2020) was inconsistent with our records around BC 3371. We measured our sample again and found the 14^{14}C records are consistent with the value in Wang et al. (2017). Therefore, our 14^{14}C records are robust. The inconsistency may be caused by the difference of calendar ages for the wood samples, or the physical origin of the event. First, crossdating on ring width can be performed only between trees whose growth has the same environmental conditions. Because the master tree-ring for dendrochronology is lack for Chinese trees. The master tree-ring from California has to be used. Therefore, the calendar ages derived from dendrochronology may be not precise. Second, the 14^{14}C even may be not global. One evidence is the variation of 14^{14}C content around AD 1006. The 14^{14}C contents of Californian trees increase 12\textperthousand~ in two years, while Japanese trees show no 14^{14}C increase.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2003.11295,
  title  = {Reply to "Rapid $^{14}$C excursion at 3372-3371 BCE not observed at two different locations"},
  author = {F. Y. Wang and H. Yu and Y. C. Zou and Z. G. Dai and K. S. Cheng},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2003.11295},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

11 pages, 1 figure, 1 table

R2 v1 2026-06-23T14:26:35.114Z