Industrial or Natural?
Recognizing the Sources of Organic Compounds Found in the Ocean
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Marine mammals have been found to bioaccumulate a new class of organic compounds that look suspisciously man-made. Are the sources of these compounds commercially made such as fire retardants that made their way into the marine food chain? WHOI scientists use carbon-14 to answer this question. |
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The Power of Radiocarbon
Past Changes in the Global Carbon Cycle
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Radiocarbon records from both tree rings and marine sediment cores demonstrate substantial changes in atmospheric 14C concentration over the past 60,000 years. Idealized models are being developed to understand how ocean ventilation must have changed to account for the variations in these records. |
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Records of Past Intense Storms
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Weather histories cover about a century of known storms and hurricanes in North America. Coastal geologists are using radiocarbon-dated storm layers in sediment cores to obtain records of weather events that occured during the past several thousand years. With enough records from different sites, climatologists can begin to reconstruct regional patterns of storminess on millenial timescales. |
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Three-Dimensional Mapping of Oceanic Circulation
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Radiocarbon released by nuclear testing in the 1950s and 60s doubled the 14C in atmospheric carbon dioxide. That pulse of istopically labeled CO2 has been dispersing in the ocean ever since. Using accelerator mass spectrometry, scientists have followed radiocarbon like a dye for over 20 years to map the circulation of world oceans in three dimensions. |
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Pirate Ships and the Calibration of Radiocarbon Ages
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In 1996 a shipwreck was discovered in the Beaufort Inlet off North Carolina with artifacts including a bell bearing the year 1705. Radiocarbon dates of materials collected from the wreck must be calibrated to determine wether it is in fact Blackbeard's ship, the Queen Anne's Revenge. The poster describes the key process of calibrating radiocarbon dates to distinguish between radiocarbon years and calendar years, and the interpretation of these results. |
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