Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 April 2016
Results from carbon 14 analysis of Bristle cone pine wood, using samples bounded by decade groups of annual rings, has established a significant long term solar periodicity of just over 200 years. Sites with large quantities of buried sub-fossil Kauri, Huon pine and Celery pine logs, which can provide data for a record possibly exceeding 20 000 years, have been identified in New Zealand and Tasmania. An initial study into periodicities, of possible solar origin, embedded in these ring-index time series can be justified on the basis that there are few other sources of annual proxy data, extending beyond the last 2000 years, that may reflect solar variability. Results from spectral analysis of a sub-fossil floating Celery pine chronology, which extends over 426 years, are considered. Carbon dating indicates that the Taupo volcanic eruption, which buried this forest, occurred about AD 177.