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Article Dans Une Revue (Data Paper) Nature Communications Année : 2022

Tree-rings reveal two strong solar proton events in 7176 and 5259 BCE

Nicolas Brehm
Marcus Christl
Florian Adolphi
Raimund Muscheler
Florian Mekhaldi
Chiara Paleari
Alex Bayliss
Kurt Nicolussi
David Brown
  • Fonction : Auteur
Lukas Wacker

Résumé

The Sun sporadically produces eruptive events leading to intense fluxes of solar energetic particles (SEPs) that dramatically disrupt the near-Earth radiation environment. Such events have been directly studied for the last decades but little is known about the occurrence and magnitude of rare, extreme SEP events. Presently, a few events that produced measurable signals in cosmogenic radionuclides such as 14 C, 10 Be and 36 Cl have been found. Analyzing annual 14 C concentrations in tree-rings from Switzerland, Germany, Ireland, Russia, and the USA we discovered two spikes in atmospheric 14 C occurring in 7176 and 5259 BCE. The ~2% increases of atmospheric 14 C recorded for both events exceed all previously known 14 C peaks but after correction for the geomagnetic field, they are comparable to the largest event of this type discovered so far at 775 CE. These strong events serve as accurate time markers for the synchronization with floating tree-ring and ice core records and provide critical information on the previous occurrence of extreme solar events which may threaten modern infrastructure.

Dates et versions

hal-03961929 , version 1 (29-01-2023)

Identifiants

Citer

Nicolas Brehm, Marcus Christl, Timothy Knowles, Emmanuelle Casanova, Richard Evershed, et al.. Tree-rings reveal two strong solar proton events in 7176 and 5259 BCE. Nature Communications, 2022, 13 (1), pp.1196. ⟨10.1038/s41467-022-28804-9⟩. ⟨hal-03961929⟩

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