From ScienceNews: Indonesia implicated as location of biggest eruption in last seven millennia
SELFOSS, Iceland — One of the biggest mysteries in volcanology may finally have a solution. An eruption long thought to have gone off in the year 1258, spreading cooling sulfur particles around the globe, happened the year before in Indonesia, scientists report.
Until now, researchers have known a big volcano went off somewhere in the world around that time, but they didn’t know exactly where or when.
The new report still remains something of a mystery. Franck Lavigne, a geoscientist at Panthéon-Sorbonne University’s Laboratory of Physical Geography in Meudon, France, showed data and close-up photographs of the remains of the perpetrator volcano on June 14 at an American Geophysical Union conference on volcanism and the atmosphere. But he declined to name the specific volcano, saying he had agreed with his international colleagues not to identify it until the work is published in a peer-reviewed journal.
“We have new and solid evidence for the biggest volcanic eruption in 7,000 years,” Lavigne said.
Consensus in the meeting hallways was that he showed pictures of Indonesia. Lavigne would say only that Indonesia has more than 130 active volcanoes.
Scientists know a big eruption must have happened in the mid-13th century because ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica dating to that time contain huge amounts of sulfur. Tree rings, historical records and other evidence also show that the planet cooled soon thereafter. Big volcanic eruptions can spew sulfur particles into the upper atmosphere, where they spread around the globe and reflect sunlight, temporarily chilling the planet.
Leading candidates for the 1258 eruption have included Mexico’s El Chichón, which also erupted in 1982, and Quilotoa in the Ecuadorean Andes. But the chemical composition of rocks from those volcanoes, among other factors, don’t really match the 1258 sulfur from ice cores.
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/02/MFRFigu2d.jpg
Interesting to note that despite the very deep negative spike, there only seems to be small dint of about 5 years long and the century scale hump does not seem to have changes course at all.
Lools like evidence of substantial neg feedbacks to me.
P solar
That horse flesh reference also intrigued me as this is only some 200 years after the Norman invasion. Bearing in mind they were ‘Norsemen’ who were unlikely to have eaten horseflesh it must be assumed that this french liking for horseflesh only developed after the Norse influence was diluted
Tonyb
commieBob says:
June 15, 2012 at 4:39 am
I discussed this question, and in fact this volcano, in Dronning Maud Meets the Little Ice Age, and Missing the Missing Summer.
w.
Disputin says (June 15, 2012 at 6:30 am): “Didn’t I read a post on here a month or so back claiming that volcanic eruptions do not correlate well with cool periods?”
This one in April by Willis Eschenbach?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/15/missing-the-missing-summer/
Tony B
&
P solar
Re: horse flesh eating French
The Treaty of Paris, was a treaty between Louis IX of France and Henry III of England, agreed to on December 4, 1259. Under the Treaty, Henry acknowledged loss of the Dukedom of Normandy. (wikipedia)
Could be Rinjani, eruptions in Indonesia are not well documented. Its the second biggest volcano in Indonesia I think, and that’s after its blew off some of its top.
Some people also think the ~534-536 AD darkening of the sun recorded in Europe was from Krakatoa, althogh the local chronologies record a Krakatoa eruption around this time, the dates don’t exactly match, but that could also be a local chronological issue.
Am I in a time warp? This is old news.
The Rinjani caldera is 5Ks across, compared to Tambora, 6.9Ks (measured from Google Earth), meaning it wasn’t as big an eruption, roughly half the size, but SO2 emissions could well have been greater. Alternatively there were 2 separate eruptions at pretty much the same time.
Lake Toba is much bigger and erupted sometime around 75,000.BP But 75,000 years ago Australia was not settled by Homo sapien sapiens. However, the Hobbit or Homo floresiensis lived on Flores 95,000 – 18,000 years ago, and is thought to be a mini me Homo Erectus. Island bound animals and humans do grow and evolve much smaller than the same species on the mainland. I was taught by Professors Peter Brown and Mike Morwood archaeology and palaeoanthropology.and Mike said 25 years ago, that we would find links to Aboriginal ancestory in SE Asia. But in the late 1980s the political situation was not good around some spots and islands in the ring of fire.
But Lake Toba the caldera that remains is massive, it would have effected SE Asia and Australia, to India I believe. But they were hunter and gatherers then and fishing probably, not pastoralists or agriculturalists. Also in Victoria and South Australia there are hot spots and a lake that formed after the last volcanic explosion around 5,000 years ago. It’s mentioned in Aboriginal dreamtime history for killing lots of people.There is a active volcano on Herd Island, that is Australian Territory near Antarctica.
Anything that Mike Mann is involved in I would be very suspicious about now. Nothing new volcanoes do alter the Earth’s atmosphere for a few years, Toba discharged 600 billion tonnes of sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere, but overall the black death in 1348 and 1351 was more destructive to human kind world wide. Look at Vesuvius, Etna and Stromboli they frequently erupt. Mt Helena in Washington State? And 80% of volcanic eruptions happen in the ring of fire in SE Asia particularly Indonesia. They stopped making wine in UK as the cold temps didn’t favor grapes, during the MIA, but they turned the grape presses into the first printing presses. Humans do adapt and propose different ways to survive, but nature always disposes. Maybe they are wanting people believe they have discovered something new? Qualify their fees and reputation, fancy not disclosing where the volcanic eruption occurred? .So other scientists can check out their data. These men are getting desperate I think.
I was having a look at Google Earth myself just now, as it happens. Make the camera angle pretty much horizontal, eye altitude about 6km and have a good pan around both Rinjani and Tambora. While Tambora’s crater is measurably very deep, Rinjani appears to have lost an awful lot of material at some point. A rough estimate would put its pre-explosion height, by my eye, at well over 5000m assuming a pretty regular stratovolcano. Based on that and what remains, I’d say there could well have been over 50 cubic kilometres of the mountain blown away at some point, perhaps much, much more. As Tambora lost 30 cubic kilometres, that suggests Rinjani could’ve had a monstrous explosion. Certainly not on the scale of Toba (about 2800 cubic kilometres), but devastating nonetheless.
The first real question is when did it happen? The second is of the chicken and egg variety, climate-wise.
thingadonta says: June 15, 2012 at 6:46 pm
Some people also think the ~534-536 AD darkening of the sun recorded in Europe was from Krakatoa
The ~535 event is attributed to the broader Sunda Caldera, of which Krakatoa is a volcano within the boundaries of the Caldera.
[SNIP: This is Wwwwaaaayyyyy off topic for this thread. Please take the time to find a more appropriate thread. It also appears that your e-mail address is not what you have provided. You can check our site policy. -REP]
ab: Whaat’s off topic? We’re talking about volcanic eruptions and their effect on the weather. Anthony W who is REP? My email addy is correct, or was that meant for someone else?
[REPLY: Bushbunny, I trust that the SNIPPED comment was NOT yours. It had a different screen name, different e-mail address, and an anonymous IP address, the first two of which are violations of site policy and the third of which should be. The comment had nothing to do with volcanoes but rather seemed to be a “gotcha” regarding a well known long-range weather forecaster. Now why would you think the comment is yours? As for who I am, I am simply one of several moderators who have volunteered to help Anthony. -REP]
Something amiss here? Anthony my email addy is correct. I thought we were discussing the effect on the weather from volcanic eruptions? And the non disclosure of which volcano these people are referring to?
[REPLY: See above. -REP]
Have just come across this study while looking for something else:
http://phys.org/news/2012-06-italian-super-eruption-larger-thought.html
“Italian super-eruption larger than thought
June 18, 2012
Recent research suggested that the super-eruption of the Campi Flegrei caldera volcano in southern Italy about 40,000 years ago may have played a part in wiping out, or forcing the migration of, the Neanderthal and modern human populations in the eastern Mediterranean regions that were covered in ash.
Now a new modeling study by Costa et al. suggests that this eruption may have been even larger than previously thought. This Campi Flegrei eruption produced a widespread ash layer known as Campanian Ignimbrite (CI). Using ash thickness measurements collected at 115 sites and a three-dimensional ash dispersal model, the authors find that the CI super-eruption would have spread 250-300 cubic kilometers (60-72 cubic miles) of ash across a 3.7-million-square-kilometer (1.4- million-square-mile) region-2 to 3 times previous ash volume estimates.
The updated values stem from a new method of modeling what the wind would have been like during the eruption. Traditionally, models assume a consistent wind field for the entire duration of an eruption. The authors, however, incorporate wind fields into the model that are based on 15 years of recent measurements, using the modern wind field that best accounts for the ash deposit measurements.
On the basis of their updated estimates, the authors calculate that up to 450 million kilograms (990 million pounds) of sulfur dioxide would have been spread into the atmosphere, driving down temperatures by 1-2 degrees Celsius (1.8-3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) for 2 to 3 years. Further, sulfur dioxide and chloride emissions would have triggered acidic rains, and fluorine-laden ash would have become incorporated into plant matter, potentially inducing fluorosis, replete with eye, tooth, and organ damage, in animal populations.”
More information: Quantifying volcanic ash dispersal and impact of the Campanian Ignimbrite super-eruption, Geophysical Research Letters, doi:10.1029/2012GL051605, 2012.
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