Radiocarbon dating is used to determine the age of everything from ancient artifacts to prehistoric corals on the ocean bottom.But in a recent study appearing in the Aug. 26 edition of the journal, Nature, a Lawrence Livermore scientist and his colleagues used the method to trace the pathway of carbon dioxide released from the deep ocean to the atmosphere at the end of the last ice age.
The team noticed that a rapid increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations coincided with a reduced amount of carbon-14 relative to carbon-12 (the two isotopes of carbon that are used for carbon dating and are referred to as radiocarbon) in the atmosphere.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Large CO2 release speeds up ice age melting | Science Blog
