Publication Date:
2022-05-25
Description:
Author Posting. © Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona, 2005. This article is posted here by permission of Dept. of Geosciences, University of Arizona for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Radiocarbon 47 (2005): 413-424.
Description:
We evaluate potential process blanks associated with radiocarbon measurement of microgram to milligram
quantities of alkenones at the National Ocean Sciences Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (NOSAMS) facility. Two strategies
to constrain the contribution of blanks to alkenone 14C dates were followed: 1) dating of samples of known age and 2) multiple
measurements of identical samples. We show that the potential contamination associated with the procedure does not lead to
a systematic bias of the results of alkenone dating to either younger or older ages. Our results indicate that alkenones record
Δ14C of ambient DIC with an accuracy of approximately 10‰. A conservative estimate of measurement precision is 17‰ for
modern samples. Alkenone 14C ages are expected to be reliable within 500 yr for samples younger than 10,500 14C yr.
Description:
This research was funded
by NSF grant # OCE-0327405 and DFG project # SCHN621 and a WHOI-NOSAMS postdoctoral
scholarship to GM.
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Article
Format:
application/pdf
