{"id":76902,"date":"2026-01-29T09:10:19","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T16:10:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=76902"},"modified":"2026-02-03T09:34:37","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T16:34:37","slug":"tree-rings-radiocarbon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/tree-rings-radiocarbon\/","title":{"rendered":"How tree rings help scientists understand disruptive extreme solar storms"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scientists have long relied on tree rings to learn about ancient solar storms\u2014rare bursts of high-energy particles from the\u00a0sun that can disrupt satellites, power\u00a0grids\u00a0and communication systems\u00a0across the planet. When these particles hit Earth\u2019s atmosphere, they create a radioactive form of carbon that trees absorb and store in their wood.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A\u00a0study\u00a0published this week in\u00a0<\/span>New Phytologist<\/span><\/a>\u00a0shows that trees\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0all record this carbon in the same way. Understanding those biological differences is key to interpreting Earth\u2019s history of extreme space weather.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The study, co-authored by Northern Arizona University researchers and a visual artist, reviews how trees take up, store and use carbon and how these processes can affect the timing and strength of the radiocarbon \u201cspikes\u201d left behind by past solar storms, known as Miyake events. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough tree rings are one of our best tools for reading Earth\u2019s history, they\u2019re not perfect instruments,\u201d said\u00a0West Virginia University scientist Amy\u00a0Hessl, lead author of the paper. \u201cThis paper shows how tree biology shapes the stories they tell.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Evidence of these ancient solar storms, far more powerful than anything measured in the modern era, show up in tree rings throughout the world. Previously, scientists have noticed small differences between trees and species that make it hard to determine exactly when the events happened or how intense they were.<\/span><\/p>\n

This study explains why. Trees don\u2019t instantly turn atmospheric carbon into wood. Instead, they may store it for months or even years before using it. Different tree species grow at different times of year and live in different climates, and they vary in how they manage their stored carbohydrates. These biological quirks can shift how radiocarbon appears in tree rings. That allows scientists to better determine when and how intense these storms were not only helping them produce more accurate reconstructions of past events but also helping them refine estimates of how strong future solar storms could be.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cUnderstanding how trees acquire carbon from the atmosphere, store it for future use and then use it to grow new wood is critical,\u201d said Mariah Carbone<\/strong>, an associate research\u00a0professor in the\u00a0Center for Ecosystem Science and Society and Department of Biological Sciences\u00a0at NAU\u00a0and last author on the paper.\u00a0\u201cThe biology determines how faithfully the atmospheric signal is preserved.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It also potentially\u00a0opens up\u00a0the use of carbon dating in other fields.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s amazing that one way to improve our understanding of solar storms and solar physics is to better understand tree growth processes, which in turn is critical for improving how we use radiocarbon for carbon dating,\u201d said Andrew Richardson<\/strong>, Regents\u2019 professor in Ecoss and the School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems and a co-author. \u201cThis study has a lot of implications for applications of carbon dating in fields such as archaeology, for example, as well as the use of radiocarbon in tree rings to reconstruct historical patterns of atmospheric radiocarbon.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Victor Leshyk, a visual artist with Ecoss, is a coauthor on the paper as well.\u00a0The work is part of a larger National Science Foundation project studying just how extreme past solar storms might have been\u2014and what similar events could mean for our\u00a0technology-dependent\u00a0society today. Modern satellites, communications\u00a0networks\u00a0and astronauts are vulnerable to the same kinds of particle storms that left their signatures in trees thousands of years ago.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Image: The path of 14C from cosmic rays to cellulose. Green arrows denote newer pools of 14C and brown arrows denote older pools. The size of the arrow reflects best estimates of size of the carbon pool. During a Miyake event, (1) solar energetic particles (SEPs), likely propelled by coronal mass ejections (CME), bombard the Earth\u2019s atmosphere, forming 14C through a cascade of nuclear interactions. Production during SEPs is strongly dependent on latitude (2), but atmospheric transport of 14C to the surface is poorly understood. Trees take up 14C through photosynthesis (3) and store it in their tissues as nonstructural carbohydrate (NSC) (4). The physiology of trees, as well as tree stress, may influence the proportion of new leaf carbon vs stored NSC, or the timing and duration of xylogenesis (5) that is allocated to new wood growth (6).\u00a0Credit: Victor Leshyk, Northern Arizona University. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scientists have long relied on tree rings to learn about ancient solar storms\u2014rare bursts of high-energy particles from the\u00a0sun that can disrupt satellites, power\u00a0grids\u00a0and communication systems\u00a0across the planet. When these particles hit Earth\u2019s atmosphere, they create a radioactive form of carbon that trees absorb and store in their wood.\u00a0\u00a0 A\u00a0study\u00a0published this week in\u00a0New Phytologist\u00a0shows that…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":76903,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research-academics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}