From the University of California, San Diego Press Release
A team of chemists from the U.S. and France has found compelling evidence of a previously undocumented large volcanic eruption that occurred exactly 200 years ago, in 1809.
The discovery, published online this week in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters, offers an explanation as to why the decade from 1810 to 1819 is regarded by scientists as the coldest on record for the past 500 years.
“We’ve never seen any evidence of this eruption in Greenland that corresponds to a simultaneous explosion recorded in Antarctica before in the glacial record,” said Mark Thiemens, Dean of the Division of Physical Sciences at UC San Diego and one of the co-authors of the study. “But if you look at the size of the signal we found in the ice cores, it had to be huge. It was bigger than the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, which killed hundreds of people and affected climate around the world.”
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| Jihong Cole-Dai of South Dakota State U. headed the research team. Credit: South Dakota State U. |
Led by a chemist from South Dakota State University, the team of scientists made its discovery after analyzing chemicals in ice samples from Antarctica and Greenland in the Arctic, where the scientists visited and drilled ice cores three years ago. The year-by-year accumulation of snow in the polar ice sheets records what is going on in the atmosphere.
“We found large amount of volcanic sulfuric acid in the snow layers of 1809 and 1810 in both Greenland and Antarctica,” said professor Jihong Cole-Dai of SDSU’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, who was the lead author of the paper.
Joël Savarino of the Laboratoire de Glaciologie et Géophysique de l’Environment in Grenoble, France, and a former postdoctoral fellow at UC San Diego, was also part of the team.
Cole-Dai said climate records show that not only were 1816 — the so-called “year without a summer”— and the following years very cold, the entire decade from 1810 to 1819 was probably the coldest for at least the past 500 years.
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| The team drilled ice cores in Greenland’s ice sheet. Credit: Mark Thiemens, UCSD |
Scientists have long been aware that the massive and violent eruption in 1815 of an Indonesian volcano called Tambora, which killed more than 88,000 people in Indonesia, had caused the worldwide cold weather in 1816 and after. Volcanic eruptions have a cooling effect on the planet because they release sulfur gases into the atmosphere that form sulfuric acid aerosols that block sunlight. But the cold temperatures in the early part of the decade, before that eruption, suggest Tambora alone could not have caused the climatic changes of the decade.
“Our new evidence is that the volcanic sulfuric acid came down at the opposite poles at precisely the same time, and this means that the sulfate is from a single large eruption of a volcano in 1809,” Cole-Dai said. “The Tambora eruption and the undocumented 1809 eruption are together responsible for the unusually cold decade.”
Cole-Dai said the Tambora eruption was immense, sending about 100 million tons of sulfur gas into the atmosphere, but the ice core samples suggests the 1809 eruption was also very large — perhaps half the size of Tambora — and would also have cooled the earth for a few years. The researchers reason that, because the sulfuric acid is found in the ice from both polar regions, the eruption probably occurred in the tropics, as Tambora did, where wind patterns could carry volcanic material to the entire world, including both poles.
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| UCSD’s Mark Thiemens (upper left) pulls a cylinder in Greenland containing an ice core. Credit: UCSD |
Cole-Dai said the research specifically looked for and found a special indicator of sulfuric acid produced from the volcanic sulfur gas in the stratosphere.
The special indicator is an unusual make-up of sulfur isotopes in the volcanic sulfuric acid. Isotopes are different types of atoms of the same chemical element, each having a different number of neutrons (but the same number of protons). The unique sulfur isotope composition is like a fingerprint of volcanic material that has reached the stratosphere, said Cole-Dai.
The stratosphere is the second major layer of the Earth’s atmosphere, reaching from about six miles to about 30 miles above the Earth’s surface at moderate latitudes. To impact global climate, rather than local weather, the sulfur gas of a volcanic eruption has to reach up into the stratosphere and once there, be spread around the globe.
“The way in which that these volcanoes affected the average temperatures of our planet gives us a better idea of how particulates in the atmosphere can affect our climate,” said Thiemens. “People talk about the possibility of geo-engineering our climate, but the question is how? In this case, nature has done an experiment for us.”
Other members of the research team were South Dakota State post-doctoral researcher David Ferris and graduate student Alyson Lanciki; and Mélanie Baroni of CEREGE (Le Centre Européen de Recherche et d’Enseignement des Géosciences de l’Environnement) at L’Université Paul Cézanne in Aix-en-Provence, France.
The researchers were funded by the National Science Foundation, French Polar Institute (IPEV) and the Institut National des Sciences del’Univers (INSU).
Has anyone ever plotted major volcanic eruptions over say the past 150 years against the “global temperature average” plot? It would be interesting to see if there is any correlation.
Jeff B. (22:33:16)
Let’s hope some Alarmist nut doesn’t get the idea to create some massive man made sulphuric release in response to AGW fears that then causes even further cooling. Cold is the danger.
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Jeff, the rocket scientist politician alarmist nuts have been busy doing what they do best: making the situation worse.
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http://ace.mu.nu/
Cow farts worse for global warming than initially suspected
—Purple Avenger
Methane! – “new and improved”, now with 30% more evil!!.
…When this indirect effect of the potent greenhouse gas is included one tonne of methane has about 33 times as much effect on the climate over 100 years as a tonne of carbon dioxide, rather than 25 times as in standard estimates…
But wait, there’s more!
…Sulphate molecules, produced when sulphur dioxide is oxidised in the atmosphere, have a cooling effect on the climate as they reflect heat but, while their direct effects are included in climate models, their indirect effects in combination with methane and other gases are not.
Methane and carbon monoxide reduce levels of sulphate aerosols, because they use up oxidants such as hydroxyl in the atmosphere. Fewer oxidant molecules are thus available to oxidise sulphur dioxide to produce sulphate…
All that “low sulfur” diesel we PAY EXTRA to refine and produce is actually hurting the effort to combat global warming, by reducing available sulfur dioxides for sulphate reaction.
I ask you — is there anywhere else on the planet other than the USA where there are rocket scientist politicians who allow you to pay extra for the privilege of hurting the planet and being a dupe of the dark lord global warming all in one shot? I think not. Only in America baby, only in America.
Leon Brozyna (02:42:30) :
How embarrassing it must be for them to learn that what they’ve done is not discover something new, but to have replicated a study reported on 18 years previously.
Press release 2009:
“We found large amount of volcanic sulfuric acid in the snow layers of 1809 and 1810 in both Greenland and Antarctica,” said professor Jihong Cole-Dai of SDSU’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, who was the lead author of the paper.
Paper 1991:
Title: Ice core evidence for an explosive tropical volcanic eruption 6
years preceding Tambora
Authors: Dai, Jihong; Mosley-Thompson, Ellen; Thompson, Lonnie G.
Publication: Journal of Geophysical Research (ISSN 0148-0227), vol.
96, Sept. 20, 1991, p. 17,361-17,366. (JGR Homepage)
delete previous pot, pleas
Leon Brozyna (02:42:30) :
How embarrassing it must be for them to learn that what they’ve done is not discover something new, but to have replicated a study reported on 18 years previously.
Press release 2009:
“We found large amount of volcanic sulfuric acid in the snow layers of 1809 and 1810 in both Greenland and Antarctica,” said professor Jihong Cole-Dai of SDSU’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, who was the lead author of the paper.
Paper 1991:
Title: Ice core evidence for an explosive tropical volcanic eruption 6
years preceding Tambora
Authors: Dai, Jihong; Mosley-Thompson, Ellen; Thompson, Lonnie G.
Publication: Journal of Geophysical Research (ISSN 0148-0227), vol.
96, Sept. 20, 1991, p. 17,361-17,366.
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workers in the field have long known about the strong volcanic activity 1808-1816. It largely explains the very anomalous behavior of the 10Be deposition at that time. An anomaly that has been ascribed to lack of solar activity. An example can be seen in the Figure on page 2 of http://www.leif.org/research/TSI%20From%20McCracken%20HMF.pdf
“People talk about the possibility of geo-engineering our climate, but the question is how?
No, the question is “Where do people like that get off contemplating forcing volcanoes to satisfy thier Utopian vision of Gaia, thereby reducing the ability of a Planet Earth currently supporting ~7 Billion to ~ 2 billion?”.
Who appointed them to the status of playing God on Earth?
“1810 to 1819 is regarded by scientists as the coldest on record for the past 500 years”
How can this possibly be known with such confidence? The only evidence available are scattered meteorological stations and proxies. Given the shenanigans that we have seen go on with paleo stuff, and given even the large stated uncertainty in such records, I feel perfectly in the right to call BS.
Another thing-the cooling of a volcanic eruption, even a large one, is fairly short lived. So two cold make a decade cool, but downright cold? Probably not.
However, solar cycles five and six were pretty weak…
Volcanic eruptions during times of solar minimums seem to be a knock-out punch for the planet biosphere. May the idol lord gaia prevent such an eruption during the current minimum. People who like to eat will then discover how desirable warming is. Cold is the death knell of flourishing food surpluses and the possibility of peaceful human co-existence. We live on an extremely dangerous planet. It only appears safe due to our short life spans and inability to view history in perspective.
Tom (04:48:43) :
Possibly SDSU jumped the gun and the study will not be published until next week. Does anyone have the actual citation?
It is in ‘papers in press’ and does indeed reference the 18-yr old result by the lead author Dai,
Dai is not at fault, but the organization around him. We have seen so many of these PR hypes lately, especially from NASA. Sure sign of over hype: if the PR says ‘breakthrough’, ‘unprecedented’, ‘scientists are baffled’, etc.
noaaprogrammer (22:09:23) :
(We need to divert and keep the warmists busy in some area other than cap & trade.)
Above average snow in many Northern Hemisphere nations around the world may do the trick. And let’s remind them of the record cold in the US and Europe.
I could guesstimate that record cold is happening in China, Mongolia, and such in other parts of the Northern Hemisphere. But where does one find that data?
The paper says:
“Volcanic sulfate was found in the 1809-1811 snow layers of Greenland as well as Antarctica ice cores [e.g.,Cole-Dai et al., 1997; 2000; Dai et al., 1991; Mosley-Thompson et al., 2003; Palmer et al., 2001], and was considered as evidence of a large eruption in the tropics that distributed volcanic aerosols to both hemispheres. However, evidence from tephra (fine volcanic ash) in ice cores [Kurbatov et al., 2006; Yalcin et al., 2006] suggests that the sulfuric acid deposits on the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets may have resulted from small or moderate eruptions that occurred contemporaneously in the high latitudes of both hemispheres. Here we present more specific and compelling evidence than the bi-polar sulfuric acid deposition in 1810-1811, in the form of unique isotopic composition of the volcanic sulfate in ice cores and of the precise timing of the volcanic deposition in the polar regions, to confirm a stratospheric eruption around 1809”
Nothing wrong with this. Good, actually to have confirmation. The fault is with the PR department and the University Dean.
Will someone please decode/explain these words:
“… world emissions would have to peak by 2015 to avoid the worst of desertification, floods, extinctions or rising seas.”
Here is the entire paragraph:
“All sides agree progress has been too slow since talks began in 2007, spurred by findings by the U.N. Climate Panel that world emissions would have to peak by 2015 to avoid the worst of desertification, floods, extinctions or rising seas.”
Source:
“U.N. talks in Spain seek to salvage climate deal
Reuters ^ | October 31, 2009 | By Alister Doyle”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2375349/posts
SunSword (07:34:37) :
Has anyone ever plotted major volcanic eruptions over say the past 150 years against the “global temperature average” plot? It would be interesting to see if there is any correlation.
There is. There is.
From 2005 WAIS Workshop … refers to Dia et al 1991 per Leif’s post (for those who can’t get to the actual paper).
http://neptune.gsfc.nasa.gov/wais/pastmeetings/PPT05/Kurbatov.pdf
Click once for slide index, see slides 13 & 14.
Good article.
The following are some long term temperature graphs, constructed using data from http://www.rimfrost.no/ . In addition, the East English data from 1659 and the Dutch De Bilt data were also included. These were converted to the “anomaly” format used by CRU. The three figures, below, show data plots using data records beginning prior to 1700, 1750 and 1800. These represented 1, 4 and 14 stations respectfully. The set for the 1750-2008 range also included station information from Berlin and Uppsala. The upper portion of the figure compares the resultant averaged raw data with the CRU 1850-2008 data. The lower part of the figure illustrates filtering the raw signals with a 40 year Fourier filter.
In looking at all three graphs, the 1810 dip shows up. The most interesting is the 1800-2008 plot. This includes stations from Paris to Warsaw, Edinburgh to Budapest, and covers a significant area of western Europe.
http://www.imagenerd.com/uploads/lt-temp-1650-2008-1-Rxrdy.gif
http://www.imagenerd.com/uploads/lt-temp-1750-2008-4-EyvXd.gif
http://www.imagenerd.com/uploads/lt-temp-1800-2008-14-9ZSv8.gif
A side issue is that if one plotted long term slopes, they show a much flatter pattern (~0.003 deg/year) then if one started from 1850 (or 1900) to the current time. The other point is the almost flat slope of the Hadcet, while the Ave sets show a definite slowing of temperature rise.
pyromancer76 (06:37:51) :
From Robock: Volcanic Eruptions and Climate (Reviews of Geophysics 38,2 – sorry, I lost the date): …”The radiative forcing from volcanoes are interannual rather than interdecadal in scale. A series of volcanic eruptions could, however, raise the mean optical depth significantly over a longer period and thereby give rise to a decadal-scale cooling”. I don’t know the reputation of the scientist in his field, but he continues with “…Volcanic forcing explained a much larger share of the temperature variability since 1620 than did the solar series.
Papers in Reviews of Geophysics are by invitation only; this is an indication that Robock’s work is solid and that he is reputable. In the note I referred to earlier, Figure 2 shows the 10Be anomalies and indicates some of the eruptions I thought responsible for the abnormality. In true spirit of pseudo-science, some people make the leap that solar activity is creating volcanic eruptions too, to maintain the solar connection.
“How can this possibly be known with such confidence?”
There are many ways. One way is glacial advance. The LIA saw the greatest advance of glaciers in this millennium and probably since the Younger Dryas.
This can be determined by dating the logs that are uncovered as these glaciers advanced through forest. There was another period of glacial advance somewhere around 200AD, I believe, but it wasn’t as extensive as the advance that ended in the 19th century.
There are two studies published this year in Quaternary Research that document glacial advance and retreat over the past couple thousand years. One is concerned with a glacier in Alaska and one in the Italian Alps. It was interesting to me that they showed similar things going on at opposite sides of the Northern Hemisphere at about the same time.
“This can be determined by dating the logs that are uncovered as these glaciers advanced through forest. ”
That wasn’t exactly clear. I meant: this can be determined by dating logs that were covered by the advancing glacier as they are uncovered when the glacier retreats.
“I mean, if it is not modelled in a cumputer, nor on YouTube, does it happen?”
Does this mean Berkleyism is making a comeback?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Berkeley
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immaterialism
RE: savethesharks (22:22:00) :
Which volcano erupted in 1809? Was it in Antarctica?
Answer: Volcanic gases do not pass the equator easily. Since in both Greenland and Antarctica ice core, the volcano was near the equator. A good guess is plus or minus 15 degrees from the equator. The most likely area is the indonesia area or near equador. I hope this helps.
Leon Brozyna (02:42:30) :
“The previously unknown … previously undocumented … never seen any evidence of this eruption before in the glacial record … our new evidence …
How embarrassing it must be for them to learn that what they’ve done is not discover something new, but to have replicated a study reported on 18 years previously. And what kind of researchers are they that they appear to be unaware of a similar study of an unlocated 1809 eruption reported on 8 years prior, in the very peer-reviewed journal in which their report appears? ”
Er, more like forgetful it seems since the lead author appears to be one and the same for both this new paper and the first of the papers that LS lists in his earlier post.
So, is this an enhancement to the original work or does the University carry the responsibility of not appreciating that there was an earlier paper when they made the press release? Or was the press release an accident of some sort … ?
Re my previous – posted before I saw the further posts and clarification from LS.
Seems I made a lucky guess on where the error lies.
Bob Tisdale (01:09:23) : There were also no major explosive volcanic eruptions from the 1920s through the 1950s.
I don’t know Bob. I think that anything with a VEI 4 or larger is classified as a major eruption and a 5 definitely is.
KLIUCHEVSKOI Kamchatka Peninsula (Russia) 1931 Mar 25 4
ANIAKCHAK Alaska Peninsula 1931 May 1 4
ANIAKCHAK Alaska Peninsula 1931 May 11 4?
FUEGO Guatemala 1932 Jan 21 4
AZUL, CERRO Central Chile 1932 Apr 10 5+
KHARIMKOTAN Kuril Islands 1933 Jan 8 5
SUOH Sumatra (Indonesia) 1933 Jul 10 4
KUCHINOERABU-JIMA Ryukyu Islands (Japan) 1933 Dec 24 4?
RABAUL New Britain 1937 May 29 4?
MICHOACAN-GUANAJUATO México 1943 Feb 20 4
AVACHINSKY Kamchatka Peninsula (Russia) 1945 Feb 25 4
SARYCHEV PEAK Kuril Islands 1946 Nov 9 4
HEKLA Southern Iceland 1947 Mar 29 4
AMBRYM Vanuatu 1951 4+
LAMINGTON New Guinea 1951 Jan 21 4
KELUT Java (Indonesia) 1951 Aug 31 4
BAGANA Bougainville Island 1952 Feb 29 4
SPURR Southwestern Alaska 1953 Jul 9 4
CARRAN-LOS VENADOS Central Chile 1955 Jul 27 4
BEZYMIANNY Kamchatka Peninsula (Russia) 1956 Mar 30 5
Information from http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/largeeruptions.cfm
Sometime ago I graphed known VEI 4 or larger eruptions.
http://i247.photobucket.com/albums/gg136/BigLee57/MajorVol1.jpg
“A good guess is plus or minus 15 degrees from the equator.”
Or, one in the Northern Hemisphere and one in the Southern Hemisphere within a few months of each other.
Bob Tisdale (01:09:23) :
Philip_B (22:15:07) : You wrote, “As I noted yesterday, the current decade is the first in modern times to have no major volcanic eruptions, which is likely ‘artificially’ warming it relative to previous decades.”
How are you defining modern times? There were also no major explosive volcanic eruptions from the 1920s through the 1950s.Refer to the Lamb Dust Veil Index. There were also a number of explosive volcanic eruptions during the period, though none as large as Tambora.
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/ndp013/ndp013.dat
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pyromancer76 (06:37:51) :
(snip)
My real concern is volcanoes and “climate change”. Anthony keeps the subject before us. Maunder Minimum — Little Ice Age — mid-1600s. From Robock: Volcanic Eruptions and Climate (Reviews of Geophysics 38,2 – sorry, I lost the date): …”The radiative forcing from volcanoes are interannual rather than interdecadal in scale. A series of volcanic eruptions could, however, raise the mean optical depth significantly over a longer period and thereby give rise to a decadal-scale cooling”.
(snip)
The main point is that when a number of powerful enough volcanoes erupt in a narrow time frame, the “natural” cooling they add (I think I read that 25 volcanoes are emitting something everyday ) might coincide with other important factors that bring about cooling. Something interesting with volcanoes has happened at both the Maunder and Dalton minima. Is there any connection?
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Interesting comments regarding quantity of eruptions vs singally large energetic eruptions being a cause for decadal temperature fluctuations. This could also serve to “Prove”a cause for the current decadal long temperature stabalization (slight decrease) offsetting the prior increase trend opposed to the current solar minimum.
Some interesting facts concerning current volcanism (since 1995)
|||Between the years of 1995 and 1999, while temperatures were still increasing to the 1998 maximum in the records, there were 34 separate volcanic eruptions (some below water) in various parts of but all over the world.
|||Between the years of 2000 and 2006, during the first temperature drop off and slight rebound from 1998 levels, there were 72 separate volcanic eruptions also in various parts of but all over the world.
|||Then from 2007 o 2009 there were another 34 separate eruptions during the last downturn in temperatures
further spurred on by another 18 currently ongoing eruptions:
Arenal, Costa Rica
Bagana, Bougainville, Papua New Guinea
Colima, Mexico
Dukono, Indonesia
Fuego, Guatemala
Karymsky, Kamchatka, Russia
Kilauea, Hawaii
Manam, Papua New Guinea
Masaya, Nicaragua
Sakura-Jima, Japan
Sangay, Ecuador
Santa Maria, Guatemala
Semeru, Java, Indonesia
Shiveluch, Kamchatka, Russia
Soufriere Hills, Montserrat, West Indies
Stromboli, Italy
Suwanose-Jima Ryukyu Islands, Japan
Tungurahua, Ecuador
While certainly there haven’t been any eruptions that could rival Pinatubo in the last decade but we have had a significant volume that could have had a greater effect on the current cooling trend more so than a .1% drop in solar activity.
And I suppose that is what I am getting at. Maybe there is no one single eruption. Maybe it is an odd chance of several smaller eruptions that happened within a few months of each other at different points on the globe. None of them by themselves are all that spectacular, but taken in summation, they could have produced a lot of SO