Paired carbon-14 ( 14 C) and thorium-230( 230 Th) ages were determined on fossil corals from the Huon Peninsula, Papua New Guinea. The ages were used to calibrate part of the 14 C time scale and to estimate rates of sea-level rise during the last deglaciation. An abrupt offset between the 14 C and 230 Th ages suggests that the atmospheric 14 C/ 12 C ratio dropped by 15 percent during the latter part of and after the Younger Dryas (YD). This prominent drop coincides with greatly reduced rates of sea-level rise. Reduction of melting because of cooler conditions during the YD may have caused an increase in the rate of ocean ventilation, which caused the atmospheric 14 C/ 12 C ratio to fall. The record of sea-level rise also shows that globally averaged rates of melting were relatively high at the beginning of the YD. Thus, these measurements satisfy one of the conditions required by the hypothesis that the diversion of meltwater from the Mississippi to the St. Lawrence River triggered the YD event.

A long record of atmospheric 14 C concentration, from 45 to 11 thousand years ago (ka), was obtained from a stalagmite with thermal-ionization mass-spectrometric 230 Th and accelerator mass-spectrometric 14 C measurements. This record reveals highly elevated Δ 14 C between 45 and 33 ka, portions of which may correlate with peaks in cosmogenic 36 Cl and 10 Be isotopes observed in polar ice cores. Superimposed on this broad peak of Δ 14 C are several rapid excursions, the largest of which occurs between 44.3 and 43.3 ka. Between 26 and 11 ka, atmospheric Δ 14 C decreased from ∼700 to ∼100 per mil, modulated by numerous minor excursions. Carbon cycle models suggest that the major features of this record cannot be produced with solar or terrestrial magnetic field modulation alone but also require substantial fluctuations in the carbon cycle.

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