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Post-Bomb Radiocarbon Records of Surface Corals from the Tropical Atlantic Ocean

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2016

Ellen R. M. Druffel
Ellen R. M. Druffel*
Affiliation:
University of California at Irvine, Department of Earth System Science Irvine, California 92717–3100 USA
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Abstract

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Δ14C records are reported for post-bomb corals from three sites in the tropical Atlantic Ocean. In corals from 18°S in the Brazil Current, Δ14C values increased from ca. −58% in the early 1950s to +138% by 1974, then decreased to 110‰ by 1982. Shorter records from 8ºS off Brazil and from the Cape Verde Islands (17°N) showed initially higher Δ14C values before 1965 than those at 18ºS, but showed lower rates of increase of Δ14C during the early 1960s. There is general agreement between the coral results and Δ14C of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) measured in seawater previously for locations in the tropical Atlantic Ocean. Δ14C values at our tropical ocean sites increased at a slower rate than those observed previously in the temperate North Atlantic (Florida and Bermuda), owing to the latter's proximity to the bomb 14C input source in the northern, hemisphere. Model results show that from 1960–1980 the Cape Verde coral and selected DIG Δ14C values from the North Equatorial Current agree with that calculated for the North Atlantic based on an isopycnal mixing model with a constant water mass renewal rate between surface and subsurface waters. This is in contrast to Δ14C values in Bermuda corals that showed higher post-bomb values than those predicted using a constant water mass renewal rate, hence indicating that ventilation in the western north Atlantic Ocean had decreased by a factor of 3 during the 1960s and 1970s (Druffel 1989).

Type
14C Cycling and the Oceans
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , 1996 , pp. 563 - 572
Copyright
Copyright © the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona 

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