Curious formatting issue: Source: Sun Emits Third Solar Flare in 2 Days | NASA Here is another metric: What I'm curious about is whether these solar flares and resulting particles make a measurable change in the atmospheric C14 levels? So I went to the Mauna Loa site looking for levels of C14 and had no luck. What I found was a ratio of C13 (selective plant) to C12 (fossil fuel carbon). So I downloaded the data and made a quick plot: This in turn led to an interesting study: http://www.bgc.mpg.de/service/iso_gas_lab/publications/PG_WB_IJMS.pdf Apparently the decreasing ratio of these two isotopes is the signature of fossil fuel. The annual ratio changes follow the seasonal changes. But the long term trend pretty much lays it on a man-made source. I was (still am) interested in finding contemporary C14 levels to see if they also map the solar minimum and maximum. The 2010, 2011, and 2012 local peaks on the bottom ratios certainly keeps me wondering if they might be a side-effect of solar activity. We'll see. Bob Wilson[/quote][/quote]
Certainly, the biggest thing to happen to C14 in the previous century was atmospheric testing of high-yield nuclear weapons. There are many sources showing the decay (which would better be called pool dilution) of C14 after the atmos. test-ban treaty. Ine is linked here Carbon-14 measurements in atmospheric CO2 from northern and southern hemisphere sites, 1962-1993 (NDP-057) second panel of Fig A-1. There we see no 11-yr cycle on the exponential 'tail'. There are, however, longer-term changes in solar fluxes (the neutron fluxes are the important ones for C14), and these require the C14 dating calibration curve to have some wiggles. One example is here File:Carbon14 with activity labels.svg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and I know there are graphs at INTCAL 04 I have two thoughts about this. First, that the atmos CO2 pool is strongly interacting with terrestrial biology and surface marine pools, so an initial 11-year cycle gets diluted out. On longer time scales, when the solar output has sustained flux changes, all the fast-interacting pools get 'labelled' so the label can persist int he places we know to look for it. The second is that when solar flares and CME are low, then galactic cosmic ray fluxes to earth are higher. GCR can also dump neutrons into the upper atmosphere. This anti-phasing may contribute to limiting the magnitude of an 11-yr C14 cycle. While that seems a simple idea, I don't find an authoritative source that simply states it. So I would not push it very hard. One of the interesting items that pops up from time to time is finding C14 activity associated with coal. Coal, being so old, should not contain that (relatively) short-leved radioisotope. Therefore, the earth is 'young' and evolution is 'bunk' etc. What those studies carefully avoid knowing is that some coal deposits are hydrologically connected to overlying recent water, and that can deliver bicarbonate ions, and one in a trillion of those (roughly) will contain a recent C14 atom. I think there is a lesson in there, about how things need to get ignored while reasoning towards a predetermined goal. But maybe this is not the right place to pontificate. Anyway. it would be great fun to spend hours talking about C12 C13 ratios (the stable isotopes) because that is what carbon cyclists like me do 7 days a week. But instead, I'll assign you to look for a book called "Children of the Corn" (at least excerpts are free online) because the author is really good.
Oops. wrong book I meant "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals" by Michael Pollan Stephen King is a good author as well
I replace my double post with this link Comprehensive study shows cosmic rays are not causing global warming - physicsworld.com A link between galactic cosmic rays and climate was looked for , and not found. There is a link for the paper published in Environmental Research Letters. And a paucity of comments slinging mud at the author(s). Somebody is not doing their job...
