Short-term fluctuations in regional radiocarbon reservoir age recorded in coral skeletons from the Ryukyu Islands in the north-western Pacific.

ABSTRACT Radiocarbon (¹⁴C) dating is a widely used and powerful tool for determining the ages of samples in studies of palaeoclimatology, palaeoseismology and archaeology. ¹⁴C ages of marine samples often require correction for local reservoir age (Δ R). Although Δ R in the mid- to low latitudes has varied through time, few spatiotemporal reconstructions of Δ R have been published for those regions. Here we report on new and previously published Δ R data for the early 1900s to 1950 obtained from coral skeletons from the Kuroshio region off southern Japan. The data presented here show a marked positive-to-negative shift of Δ R from the early 1900s to the 1940s, which has important implications for calibration of radiocarbon ages in the region and for understanding the relationship of Δ R in the western Pacific with both the El Niño-Southern Oscillation and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]