Kentaro Nagaya

A signature of cosmic-ray increase in ad 774–775 from tree rings in Japan

Increases in 14C concentrations in tree rings could be attributed to cosmic-ray events, as have increases in 10Be and nitrate in ice cores. The record of the past 3,000 years in the IntCal09 data set, which is a time series at 5-year intervals describing the 14C content of trees over a period of approximately 10,000 years, shows three periods during which 14C increased at a rate greater than 3‰ over 10 years. Two of these periods have been measured at high time resolution, but neither showed increases on a timescale of about 1 year (refs 11 and 12). Here we report 14C measurements in annual rings of Japanese cedar trees from ad 750 to ad 820 (the remaining period), with 1- and 2-year resolution. We find a rapid increase of about 12‰ in the 14C content from ad 774 to 775, which is about 20 times larger than the change attributed to ordinary solar modulation. When averaged over 10 years, the data are consistent with the decadal IntCal 14C data from North American and European trees. We argue that neither a solar flare nor a local supernova is likely to have been responsible.

Regional climate pattern during two millennia estimated from annual tree rings of Yaku cedar trees: a hint for solar variability?

We analyzed trees that have survived on Yaku island (Yakushima) for 2,000 years. Quite surprisingly, the Fourier and wavelet analyses of the annual growth rate identified 2 cycles of periodicities of 11 and (24 ± 4) years during the Oort, Wolf, Spörer, Maunder, and Dalton minima. The 11-year periodicity originated from solar activity, while the (24 ± 4)-year periodicity may be related to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). In particular, we have discovered an 11-year periodicity in the meteorological daylight-hour data from Yakushima in the month of June during 1938 to 2013 and a 24-year periodicity in July. The growth rate of the tree rings may be affected by the variation of the daylight hour.Rings Y. Murakia∗, T. Mitsutani, S. Kuramata, K. Masuda, K. Nagaya, and S. Shibata a Solar-Terrestrial Environment Laboratory, Nagoya University, Nagoya 464-8601, Japan Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Nara 630-8577, Japan Faculty of Science and Technology, Hirosaki University, Hirosaki 036-8561, Japan Engineering Science Laboratory, College of Engineering, Chubu University, Kasugai 487-0027, Japan