On the presence of regular periodicities in the thermoluminescence profile of a recent sea sediment core

We briefly discuss how the thermoluminescence (TL) profile of a young marine sediment provides phenomenological information on the changes in the environmental conditions in the past 18 centuries. The main periodicities present in the TL profile are studied and the similarities between the TL variations and the fluctuations in the contemporary tree-ring A14C signal are considered. An interesting result is the presence, in the TL data, of a well-defined 11-year cycle which is stable and ‘in phase’ for the entire period analysed. We also discuss how four dominant periodicities present in the TL data may be rewritten as the sum of an 11.4-year and of an 82.6- year cycle (reminiscent respectively of the Schwabe and of the Gleissberg cycles of solar activity), which are both amplitude modulated by a 206-year wave. This last periodicity has already been shown to play a dominant role in the A14C record. These results suggest that the TL profiles of recent marine sediments may be successfully used as a new line of evidence for solar variability in the past centuries.