Huge Solar Storm 14,375 Years Ago

 Science Alert reports that "The Most Violent Solar Storm Ever Detected Hit Earth in 12350 BCE." The article begins:

    A huge cosmic event some 14,300 years ago was so powerful, it left a discernible mark on our planet.

    In the partially fossilized trunks of ancient trees, and excavated cores of millennia-old ice, scientists have found evidence that suggests some sort of massive space event took place in around 12350 BCE.

    New work using a specially developed climate-chemistry model called SOCOL:14C-Ex clinches it. The culprit behind the huge particle influx during that time was a giant event from the Sun, pelting Earth with particles in the biggest geomagnetic storm we have on record.

    "Compared to the largest event of the modern satellite era – the 2005 particle storm – the ancient 12350 BCE event was over 500 times more intense, according to our estimates," says space physicist Kseniia Golubenko of the University of Oulu in Finland.

And this article at Watts Up With That, "ICE AGE SOLAR STORM SHOCK: Trees Hold 14K-Year-Old Secret That Could CRASH Tech Today!", provides some more context:

    The record-strong storm is described by a paper in the upcoming July 2025 edition of the peer-reviewed journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters. It occured in 12,350 BC and is classified as a “Miyake Event.”

    Miyake Events are solar storms that make the Carrington Event of 1859 look puny. Trees “remember” them in their rings, which store the carbon-14 created by gargantuan storms. At least six Miyake Events have been discovered and confirmed since Fusa Miyake found the first one in 2012. The list so far includes 664-663 BC, 774 AD, 993 AD, 5259 BC, 7176 BC, and 12,350 BC.

    The Miyake Event of 12,350 BC is especially intriguing. It appears as a carbon-14 spike in Scots Pine trees along the banks of the Drouzet river in France, with a matching beryllium-10 spike in Greenland ice cores. The event was global and, based on the size of the spikes, very big.

 And:

According to their paper, 12,350 BC is the biggest Miyake Event yet.  It produced a hailstorm of solar particles 500 times greater than the most intense solar particle storm recorded by modern satellites in 2005. During the 2005 event, an airline passenger flying over the poles might have received a year’s worth of sea-level cosmic radiation in just one hour. During the 12350 BC event, the same dose would have been received in a mere eight seconds.

Here is the link to the paper: "New SOCOL:14C-Ex model reveals that the Late-Glacial radiocarbon spike in 12350 BC was caused by the record-strong extreme solar storm." 

    I find the date to be interesting because it corresponds to the glacial termination at the end of the last Ice Age. The Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University has this to say about the end of the last Ice Age and onset of the Younger Dryas:

    Around 15,000 years ago, the Earth started warming abruptly after ~ 100,000 years of an "ice age"; this is known as a glacial termination. The large ice sheets, which covered significant parts of North America and Europe, began melting as a result. A climatic optimum known as the "Bölling-Allerød" was reached shortly thereafter, around 14,700 before present [i.e., before 1950]. However, starting at about 12,800 BP, the Earth returned very quickly into near glacial conditions (i.e. cold, dry and windy), and stayed there for about 1,200 years: this is known as the Younger Dryas (YD), since it is the most recent interval where a plant characteristic of cold climates, Dryas Octopetala, was found in Scandinavia.

    The most spectacular aspect of the YD is that it ended extremely abruptly (around 11,600 years ago), and although the date cannot be known exactly, it is estimated from the annually-banded Greenland ice-core that the annual-mean temperature increased by as much as 10°C in 10 years.