SGER: Radiocarbon (14C)-Calendar Calibration: An Update to "CALIB"

University Of California-Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz CA

Investigators

Abstract

This award, under the auspices of the Small Grants for Exploratory Research (SGER) program, will improve and extend the radiocarbon calibration program (i.e., CALIBRATION) used in the field of paleoclimatology to provide a temporal control for climatic events. Dating geo-biologic samples to establish age control is critical to paleoclimatic investigations. The CALIBRATION program (i.e., CALIB) is fundamental to this enterprise. The CALIB program needs to be periodically updated to take advantage of the latest developments in geochemical measurements and understanding of carbon reservoir effects on radiocarbon dating. This award will help researchers improve the calibration across several critical time periods in the Holocene and Pleistocene time periods that are at the forefront of paleoclimate research intensely supported by the NSF through many Programs and across Directorates. In addition to updating the program, the researcher team will also modify the CALIB software so that it is compatible with Microsoft Windows and Macintosh operating systems. U.S. and non-U.S. researchers, on collaborative international projects supported in part by the National Science Foundation, use the CALIB program extensively. As such, CALIB has great utility and great impact by helping the research community integrate its research efforts.