Abstract
Nitrate concentration in the absolutely dated Greenland ice core from Crête has been measured for six time intervals, five surrounding the time of appearance of the well established historical supernovae during the past 1,000 yr and one during the Maunder minimum of solar activity, to look for a possible correlation between supernovae and nitrate concentration. The findings of Rood et al.1 of nitrate spikes corresponding to the appearance of the historical supernovae and a pronounced minimum in nitrate contents during the Maunder minimum are not confirmed. A very regular annual variation of nitrate concentration is observed superimposed on a constant background. We show here that both these signals seem unaffected by the known variations in the solar activity for the periods analysed. The nitrate contents are unaffected by peaks in acidity caused by volcanic eruptions. The annual variation of nitrate concentration suggests it could be used for dating ice cores.
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Risbo, T., Clausen, H. & Rasmussen, K. Supernovae and nitrate in the Greenland Ice Sheet. Nature 294, 637–639 (1981). https://doi.org/10.1038/294637a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/294637a0
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