Production rates of atmospheric cosmogenic nuclides 3H, 7Be, 10Be, 14C, 22Na, 36Cl calculated for the 20th and early 21st centuries

Galactic cosmic rays constantly bombard the Earth’s atmosphere and induce cascades of nuclear reactions that produce various particles. One of the products of such interactions is cosmogenic nuclides, very useful tools for researches in different areas, such as solar physics, atmospheric physics, geomagnetic studies, hydrology, archeology, and many others. Their production rates are not uniform over the globe. Due to the changing shielding effect of the Earth’s geomagnetic field from cosmic rays, the production is higher in polar regions than near the equator. Furthermore, the production of cosmogenic nuclides varies greatly with altitude. In addition, the cosmic ray flux changes over time, following variations in solar activity. Several production models are available that account for all these effects (Poluianov et al., 2016, 2020), but their use requires some learning of computational details. To simplify the application of these models, we present calculated time series of the production rates for ³H, ⁷Be, ¹⁰Be, ¹⁴C, ²²Na, and ³⁶Cl, covering more than a century up to the present day. The results provide altitude-longitude-latitude resolution for each nuclide, include recent cosmic-ray data for the beginning of the 20th century, and account for the slow evolution of the geomagnetic field.