The following radiocarbon dates are a partial list of samples measured for a variety of projects and materials since August 1979. Chemical and counting procedures remain the same as indicated in R, v 20, p 274-282.

The limits of the statistical evaluation of 14C dates by histograms are discussed. The method of the attempt to establish a global chronology of the short-term eustatic sea-level changes during the Holocene is examined as well as its correlation with the precisely determined Suess wiggles.

Information on the history of the atmospheric CO2 content and the 13C/12 and 14C/C ratios is recorded in natural ice. Measurements on samples from very cold accumulation regions show that CO2 is occluded not only in air bubbles, but also in the ice lattice. The two CO2 components are of similar size. It is very difficult to measure CO2 in the bubbles and CO2 in the ice lattice separately. By melting the samples and extracting the evolving gases in two fractions, it is possible to estimate CO2 concentration in the bubbles and the ice lattice. Enrichment or depletion of CO2 in the bubbles by exchange with the ice is difficult to estimate. Information about this effect is expected from 13C/12C analysis on the extracted CO2 fractions.

To investigate whether atmospheric CO2 content was different during the last glaciation than during the present one, sets of 16 and 20 samples distributed over the last 40,000 years from the two deep ice cores from Camp Century (North Greenland) and Byrd Station (West Antarctica) were measured. The time scales for the two cores are based on a rheological model. Results and conclusions are:

1. — The data series from both cores show similar trends correlated to a certain degree to the δ18O profiles.

2. — For both cores, the values for the CO2 concentration of the first fraction, considered to best represent the atmospheric composition, show lower values during glaciation than in the Holocene, with a minimum before the end of glaciation.

3. — Low CO2 concentrations in the first fractions (200ppm) of certain samples are a strong indication that the atmospheric CO2 concentration during last glaciation was lower than during the postglacial. These low concentrations indicate that, at that time, CO2 concentration in the atmosphere could have been lower than today by a factor of 1.5. Possible explanations for such a change in atmospheric CO2 content as well as its influence on atmospheric 14C/C ratio and on the radiation balance is discussed.

The following radiocarbon dates are a partial list of samples measured for a variety of projects and materials since January 1980. Chemical and counting procedures remain the same as indicated in R v 20, p 274-282.

During Pleistocene pluvial precipitation was sufficient for the maintenance of groundwater supported lakes and for the accumulation of playa lakes in wind-scoured depressions during the early Holocene pluvial. At places where ground water reaches near to the surface, wells (birs) have been dug and maintained in historic times. These birs have been used as sampling sites for water analyses, including carbon-14 levels, carbon and oxygen stable isotope ratios, tritium concentrations, and chemical data.

All the waters from birs analyzed to date produced apparent radiocarbon ages ranging from late historic to early Holocene, and tritium analyses on some of these indicate no recharge during the Atomic age.

Sources of error for the radiocarbon analyses, including exchange with atmospheric CO2, respiration by plant roots, and contact with carbonates of considerably older age, were evaluated. None of these factors have such an extreme impact on the measurements as to render the result invalid. Two trends revealed by these data are an increase in apparent age from northwest to southwest and with subsequent extractions at the same site where the hand-dug well was bailed out and sampled four times within two days.

We conclude that recharge of shallow ground water occurred in early Holocene time, and some recharge of deeper aquifers may have occurred where infiltration paths permitted. Some recharge occurred in late Holocene (post pluvial) time, but the net trend has been toward hyper-aridity that characterizes the area today.

The concentration of radiocarbon in the earth's atmosphere is used to analyze the complex of problems associated with the study of various astrophysical, geophysical, and geochemical phenomena within the framework of the All-Union problem of Astrophysical Phenomena and Radiocarbon. Effects of the supernovae explosions, solar activity, geomagnetic field and climatic changes in the 14C level in tree-rings are considered.

A procedure is outlined for using cosmogenic 10Be variations in polar ice cores and lake or inland sea sediments to correct for 14C production variations in the past. Some of the requirements and problems associated with such a procedure are discussed.

Shells in beach-ridge and chenier Holocene deposits from the Gulf of Carpentaria, Queensland, have been dated by radiocarbon. Possible contamination of carbonate by post-depositional diagenetic processes, isotopic fractionation, ocean reservoir environmental effect, and association of biological age of sample material with depositional event have been examined in order to validate dating of samples from this environment. A numerical methodology used for comparing ‘groups’ of 14C dates strongly supports morphostratigraphic evidence that time discontinuities occur within both chenier and beach-ridge sequences. Four episodes are recognized in each area, all younger than ca 5800 years ago, the time when sea level reached its postglacial maximum in the Gulf of Carpentaria. To some extent, these episodes are out of phase, reflecting different modes of strandline accumulation.

The correlations between atmospheric radiocarbon cencentrations, on the one hand, and solar activity and the earth's magnetic field, on the other, as well as possible relations between surface temperatures and solar activity and the earth's magnetic field are considered. To draw a consistent picture of these relations, the following mechanisms for climatic changes are proposed: The earth's magnetic field and solar activity both influence the fluxes of charged solar particles into the upper stratosphere; higher surface temperatures are positively correlated with higher particles fluxes. Charged particles produce nitric oxide, which controls, to some extent, the ozone destruction and, thus, the ozone inventory in the upper layers of the stratosphere (above the 10 mbar level) in latitudes greater than about 60°. The varying ozone contents in the upper stratosphere affect the radiation balance and the temperatures on the earth's surface. It has been estimated that a reduction, or increase, respectively, of ozone in the layers above 10 mbar warms, or cools, respectively, the earth's surface. A change of ozone in the lower layers of the stratosphere has the opposite effect. The maximum net effect is in the order of ΔTs ≈ 0.3–1 K, in both directions. This hypothesis might be in accordance with an orbital origin of long-term climatic changes.

Detailed radiocarbon chronologies from three volcanic crater lakes (maars) in southeast Australia are examined in relationship to the magnetic mineral stratigraphies within lakes, and the magnetic secular variation stratigraphy between lakes. Some implications for magnetic dating are considered.

Chemical components in a sea sediment core from the Santa Barbara Basin show the same periodic variations as do stable isotope variations in a Japanese cedar.

The absolute time of growth of a floating tree-ring series is determined by computer, by first fitting a curve to the 14C ages of tree-ring dated wood and then by matching the 14C ages of the floating tree-ring series to that curve. The results obtained by this matching procedure are given here for five floating European oak chronologies for which 14C dates have been published previously by Suess (1978). Three of these five floating series have been linked together dendrochronologically. There now remain three floating series covering a 4000-year time span from 4820 BC to 830 BC. Their 14C dates, matched by computer to the bristlecone pine chronology, provide a possibility of obtaining precise ages of oak wood series from Neolithic sites in Switzerland and South Germany by dendrochronologically cross-dating with the calibrated master chronologies.

High-precision 14C measurements are presented, carried out on single tree rings from a section of the floating South German Neolithic tree-ring chronology. They confirm the existence of pronounced medium-term variations in the order of 2 percent during the 33rd to 38th centuries BC.

These variations turn out to be very regular while the precision of 1.5‰ allows a comparison with a geochemical model calculation. Good agreement is acquired for an input function with a periodicity of about 150 years and an amplitude of approximately 30 percent in the 14C production rate.

Within the United States, the State of California ranks first in recorded earthquake frequencies. Annually, thousands of shocks are registered on seismometers and many hundreds are actually noticed directly by Californians. In modern times, about one quake per year, destructive to property, has occurred, yet the very large and disastrous events approaching magnitude 8 and higher on the Richter scale are spaced a few decades apart: 1857 in Southern California centered on Tejon Pass, 1872 in the Owens Valley, and 1906 in San Francisco. Unfortunately, the historical record for earthquakes is short in California when compared with accounts for Europe or China, both of which list quakes over a time period of some 2000 to 3000 years. In California, the first historically noted event dates to barely 200 years ago, when in 1769, members of an expedition of the Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portola were knocked to the ground along the Santa Ana River during a large earthquake.