The 774–775 AD Miyake Event

What happened

The first-discovered and most intense confirmed solar superstorm on record, identified in 2012 by physicist Fusa Miyake through a sudden 12‰ spike in radiocarbon within Japanese cedar tree rings — roughly 20 times larger than ordinary solar-driven fluctuations. Later confirmed in tree rings from Germany, Russia, the United States, Finland, and New Zealand, and in ice-core beryllium and chlorine isotopes from both hemispheres. Estimated at roughly 10 times the strength of the 1859 Carrington Event, with research pointing to spring of AD 774 as its likely timing. No instruments existed to observe it directly; its scale is inferred entirely from these global isotope records.