Meanwhile “Great Rift” volcano in Ethiopia erupts after seismic swarm, leading to evacuations.
Posted by Leslie Eastman
Whenever I write about climate change, I often note that volcanoes can have significant impacts on the global climate.
A new example has been recently revealed, as a ‘mystery volcano’ that erupted in 1831 and significantly cooled Earth’s climate has finally been identified as Zavaritskii on Simushir Island, part of the Kuril Islands archipelago between Russia and Japan.
This eruption was one of the most powerful of the 19th century, releasing an enormous amount of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. The Earth-caused emissions resulted in a decrease of approximately one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) in the annual average temperatures of the Northern Hemisphere.
The challenge in locating the volcano was due to its remote location.
While the year of this historic eruption was known, the volcano’s location was not. Researchers recently solved that puzzle by sampling ice cores in Greenland, peering back in time through the cores’ layers to examine sulfur isotopes, grains of ash and tiny volcanic glass shards deposited between 1831 and 1834.
Using geochemistry, radioactive dating and computer modeling to map particles’ trajectories, the scientists linked the 1831 eruption to an island volcano in the northwest Pacific Ocean, they reported Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
..Before the scientists’ findings, Zavaritskii’s last known eruption was in 800 BC.
“For many of Earth’s volcanoes, particularly those in remote areas, we have a very poor understanding of their eruptive history,” said lead study author Dr. William Hutchison, a principal research fellow in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of St. Andrews in the United Kingdom.
“Zavaritskii is located on an extremely remote island between Japan and Russia. No one lives there and historical records are limited to a handful of diaries from ships that passed these islands every few years,” Hutchison told CNN in an email.
To find the volcano, researchers compared the chemistry of microscopic shards of ash extracted from ice cores drilled in Greenland with samples from the Zavaritskii caldera. They determined it was a perfect match.
“Finding the match took a long time and required extensive collaboration with colleagues from Japan and Russia, who sent us samples collected from these remote volcanoes decades ago,” Hutchison says.
“The moment in the lab when we analyzed the two ashes together, one from the volcano and one from the ice core, was a genuine eureka moment. I couldn’t believe the numbers were identical. After this, I spent a lot of time delving into the age and size of the eruption in Kuril records to truly convince myself that the match was real.”
Meanwhile, recent volcanic activity at Mount Dofan in Ethiopia has caused significant concern and prompted evacuations in the surrounding area.
Hundreds of people in a rural part of Ethiopia, 165km (100 miles) north-east of the capital, Addis Ababa, have been leaving their homes in panic as a nearby volcano has been showing signs of a possible eruption, a local chief told the BBC’s Afaan Oromoo service.
The smoke coming from Mount Dofan that began around 17:00 local time (14:00 GMT) on Thursday “has a fiery plume and it’s very high,” Sultan Kemil said.
In a video posted by the Ethiopian Geological Institute on its Facebook page steam and debris can be seen shooting out from the mountain.
In recent weeks, there have been more than a dozen seismic events around Awash Fentale – an earthquake-prone area of Ethiopia’s Afar region.
The seismic activity is part of the ongoing geological processes in the Great Rift Valley, where new oceanic crust is being generated.
Personally, I am looking forward to seeing how eco-activists connect the rifting to SUVs.
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Considering that 1816 was “the year without a summer” it’s fortunate for mankind that it’s warmed since then.
‘The seismic activity is part of the ongoing geological processes in the Great Rift Valley, where new oceanic crust is being generated.’
Good. Before the ‘discovery’ of fire, mankind’s extent was severely limited to the favorable climates of East African rift valleys. We’re gonna need a lot more of them once the Left finishes outlawing fossil fuels.
Just my wild guess but I doubt that mankind was mostly limited to the Great Rift Valley. It’s just that that’s a great place for fossil formation.
Outlawing fossil fuels for everyone but themselves, of course!
Oh no! The volcano is Gaia upset over Donald Trump!!
Still desperately trying to shift direction away from the two warmest years recorded by instruments globally, 2004 followed by 2003.
Oops, 2024 followed by 2023.
(If I was smart, I wouldn’t be posting here).
You said it
Posting here… his/her every post exposes the fact that he/she is a total dim-wit and intellectual minnow.
Pat, you drove that nail home!
That is true, why you would be so eager to embarrass yourself has never made sense.
Your modesty is endearing Rusty, but we’re not very impressed by the highest numbers in 45 years, nearly a hundred millionth of earth history.
There is NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY! Only a fortuitous slightly milder period of weather wholly beneficial to human flourishing. Enjoy it while you can.
Numbers that aren’t even global.
‘…warmest years recorded by instruments globally…’
By your definition, that would be a 45 year (1979 – 2024) period. Do you have any evidence that global temperatures never varied during any 45 year period prior to 1979?
I survived!
Indeed, it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the weather, the economy or that bloomin’ barking dog next door.
Frankly, if that’s the worst you’ve got, I don’t want to go through Covid lockdowns to avoid it.
Except, Covid lockdowns were nowhere near strict enough to affect Mauna Loa CO2 levels.
You are asking for far more restrictive controls than shutting China’s factories, India’s railways and putting the West on house arrest.
Still desperately trying to shift direction away from the costs of your paranoia.
Nice…
Excellent use of a Qualifier!!!
Warmest years recorded by “instruments” globally😁
And ignoring the fact that most of the last 10,000 year have been warmer than now.
Temperatures are still very much at the lower end, over that period.
Lower than they were 420,000 years ago.
Lower than they were 335,000 years ago.
Lower than they were 240,000 years ago.
Lower than they were 125,000 years ago.
Lower than they were 5,000 years ago.
Lower than they were 2,000 years ago.
And of course the warming isn’t over.
roflmao. tree ring fakery, spliced with fake modern temperatures..
Well done. !! FAKE everything. !!
Trees, when there is low CO2, are one of the worst “thermometers” there is.
There are huge amounts of real evidence that the MWP was warmer than now.
… Svalbard
…China
… Germany
… Patagonia.. Chile
… Portugal
… Arctic, Greenland
(note, reversed date axis)
… UK
..Azores
“the warming isn’t over.”
totally unsupportable speculation !!
Nice Hokey Schtick
So, was the 400 year long Viking Settlement of Greenland enabled by a 400 year long Local Weather Pattern Shift? Your chart would indicate that this event didn’t happen. Temperatures of 1°C colder than today would not allow for settlements to flourish in that area.
Temperatures were no where near warmer 2000 ya …
As for 5000 ya ago the NH was just coming out of the HCO (Holocene climatic optimum), when TSI was a maximum at 65 deg N, and was after the melt of the ice sheets while TSI was decreasing but still high.
As for the older dates.
Are you serious?
Caused by orbital characteristics (aka Milankovitch cycles).
BTW: should anyone say AGW is “existential”, they do not mean for the planet. They refer to our civilization of 8+ bn peeps many millions of them living close to sea level – and it will take a long time to play out.
The current CO2 (and CH4) concentrations are anthro made and are NOT a natural occurence outside of our control.
CO2 is a GHG. As such it both leads temp AND follows it due to variation in SST’s and flora response.
,
Ah, H H Lamb’s schematic diagram – a noted favourite here.
Sorry, it is not for the globe and is in fact for central England.
Also there is a tad more data available now than 47 ya.
And “Multiple sources”.
“The schematic diagram by H.H. Lamb that was featured in the IPCC First Assessment Report of 1990 was based on a series of his work, including:
Historical documents: Lamb used historical documents to generalize about central England’s temperature records.
Archaeological evidence: Lamb used archaeological evidence to trace past climatic trends.
Documentary evidence: Lamb used documentary evidence of vineyards in southern and eastern England to raise summer temperatures in his Medieval reconstructions.
https://web.archive.org/web/20151014073536/http://shadow.eas.gatech.edu/%7Ekcobb/jones09.pdf
“So where did the schematic diagram come from and who drew
it? It can be traced back to a UK Department of the Environment
publication entitled Global climate change published in 1989
(UKDoE, 1989), but no source for the record was given. Using
various published diagrams from the 1970s and 1980s, the source
can be isolated to a series used by H.H. Lamb, representative of
central England, last published (as figure 30 on p. 84) by Lamb
(1982). Figure 7 shows the IPCC diagram with the Lamb curve
superimposed – clearly they are the same curve. The ‘Central
England’ curve also appeared in Lamb (1965: figure 3 and 1977:
figure 13.4), on both occasions shown as an ‘annual’ curve
together with the extreme seasons: winter (December to
February) and high summer (July and August). The IPCC diagram
comes from the 1982 publication as the vertical resolution
of the annual plot is greater. The data behind the 1977 version are
given in table app. V.3 in Lamb (1977), but these are essentially
the same as previously given in Lamb (1965). All three versions
of the plot have error ranges (which are clearest in the 1982 version
and indicate the range of apparent uncertainty of derived versions).
The 1982 version dispenses with the three possible curves
evident in Lamb (1965, 1977) and instead uses a version which
accounts for the ‘probable under-reporting of mild winters in
Medieval times’ and increased summer temperatures to meet
‘certain botanical considerations’. Lamb (1965
discusses the latter point at length and raised summer temperatures in his
Mediaeval reconstructions to take account of the documentary
evidence of vineyards in southern and eastern England. The
amount of extra warmth added during 1100–1350 was 0.3–0.4°C,
or about 30% of the range in the black curve in Figure 7. At no
place in any of the Lamb publications is there any discussion of
an explicit calibration against instrumental data, just Lamb’s
qualitative judgement and interpretation of what he refers to as
the ‘evidence’. Variants of the curves also appear in other Lamb
publications (see, eg, Lamb, 1969).
Many in the palaeoclimatic community have known that the
IPCC (1990) graph was not representative of global conditions
(even when it first appeared) and hence the reference to it as a
schematic. Lamb’s (1965, 1977, 1982) series has been used as one
of the series comprising the NH composite developed by Crowley
and Lowery (2000), representative of Central England.”
So, according to that graph, there couldn’t possibly have been any treelines higher than they are now. Yet there are.
From post:”As such it both leads temp AND follows it due to variation in SST’s and flora response.”
You are kidding right? It never leads.
This is another interesting question. Did the cart go before the horse? Does CO2 cause warming or does warming generate CO2?
Thanks for the context here. Determining how warm or cold various periods have been in the past before formal records began must be a challenge. However, the fact that vineyards were grown in England (and even Scotland), alongside the existence of thriving communities in Greenland does pose an obvious question? While it’s easy to accept that England isn’t representative of the globe, when Greenland is included, then we’re looking at a potentially much more extensive area, albeit still relatively small. There is also evidence I believe of severe European droughts …and conversely severe flooding during the medieval period. Again, this suggests, the climate must have been quite different to the constant state we’re led to believe on the shaft of the hockey stick.
I think it’s really important to try to get a handle on what “normal” temperature actually means, in the context of human existence. Much is said here on WUWT also about the so-called “Little Ice Age”. If this period did indeed precede the industrial age, then why would we use this era as a benchmark with which to compare temperatures of more recent times? Answers to questions are important in determining whether the current warming is natural, human caused or a bit of both. From all my amateur research on this, I feel there’s still a huge gulf of missing knowledge of past climate. But the issue that concerns me most, is the lack of willingness by mainstream climate science to engage in open honest debate with scientists who have opposing views to those of CO2 driven global warming.
“But the issue that concerns me most, is the lack of willingness by mainstream climate science to engage in open honest debate with scientists who have opposing views to those of CO2 driven global warming.”
You’ve found it! The heart of the matter!
Why won’t climate alarmists engage in open honest debate? The answer is they don’t have the evidence they need to win such a debate, so they don’t debate.
This is how skeptics are created.
Back in the 1970’s, climate scientists were promoting the idea that humans were causing the Earth to cool and there was a chance the Earth was cooling into another ice age.
At the time, I had no idea if these scientists were right or wrong, and was looking forward to them showing the rest of us the mechanism for how humans could cause the Earth to cool drastically.
So I waited for the climate alarmists to go into more detail and explain how humans were causing cooling, and I waited and I waited and I waited and I waited. And they never did come out with any definitive evidence for what they were claiming.
So I became a little skeptical of their claims.
And then in the 1980’s the temperatures started warming up and suddenly all the talk was about how humans were causing the Earth’s atmosphere to warm up.
So color me skeptical right off the bat on this one.
And there is no more evidence now for human-caused global warming than there is for human-caused global cooling.
If the promoter of an idea runs away when you ask for evidence, you should assume that person doesn’t have any evidence. That’s the only logical reason for a person running away from an argument.
If they had the answers and the evidence, they would be shouting it from the rooftops.
You are on the right track. Keep questioning.
True, but utterly meaningless. Continued warming from the little ice age. A good thing, very beneficial.
Poor fungal spore…
Still in DENIAL of the El Nino event.
still no evidence of human causation.
Record global rice production
Record global wheat production
Record global corn production
Apparently the warmest year ever is the best year ever. Fancy that.
Forget the politics.
Finding the volcano that caused that dip in temperatures is top notch science.
Tribute.
Yeah, especially because it doesn’t support the AGW narrative.
***************** BREAKING!!! *****************
Further research has determined that fallout from the volcano reached portions of Michigan and caused negative mutations in some of the residents….so far the only confirmed results are the significant lowering of the IQ of members of the GREENE family, especially those first names begin with the letter “R”….could that include the visiting TROLL “RichTARD Greene?
Ha, ha, ha, it looks like RichTARD Greene is lurking and downvoting.
That’s Rich
On the land surface, volcanic eruptions cool the atmosphere.
Then there are the oceans.
Link https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/facts/mid-ocean-ridge.html
The mid-ocean ridge system is the most extensive chain of mountains on Earth, stretching nearly 65,000 kilometers (40,390 miles) and with more than 90 percent of the mountain range lying underwater, in the deep ocean.
Mid-ocean ridges occur along divergent plate boundaries, where new ocean floor is created as the Earth’s tectonic plates spread apart. As the plates separate, molten rock rises to the seafloor, producing enormous volcanic eruptions of basalt.
Despite being such a prominent feature on our planet, much of the mid-ocean ridge system remains a mystery.
That mystery includes how much heat is transferred to the oceans by this volcanic action.
And how much heat is transferred to the oceans by the continuous but variable heat output from these highly active regions.
There will be pulses, and lulls and we would never really know.
“ mystery includes how much heat is ” …
… generated by people and their things. Have you ever wrapped your hand around an incandescent light bulb? Do you remember the Columbo scene where he put his hand on the hood of a vehicle to see if it was recently running? Spilled a cup of coffee on your crotch at a drive-thru window? Felt the heat from the breakdown of organic materials in a compost pile? Mysteries all.
But, you can have an Incandescent Bulb ON in the living room but have no heating effect in the bathroom (from it). Incandescent lights are a slightly localized heat source with no effect on temperatures more than a few feet away.
You forgot the sarc tag. If not do you want to buy a bridge. Any heat source in and enclosed space will affect the temperature elsewhere, unless there is enough heat sources, sinks or drafts to overwhelm it. In any case that space will be warmer even if not measurable. Heat does not magickly disappear. Without the light the enclosed space will be colder not only living room but also in the bathroom.
But if something isn’t measurable is it still quantifiable or only implied?
You can’t heat a house with a single candle…unless you knock it over under the drapery.
It is measurable – it just hasn’t been done yet. Here is an example in the depths of the Southwest Pacific. The deep ocean seems to be warming up towards the east as it approaches a mid-ocean ridge.
Yeah, and Renewables plus battery can replace the need for reliable Fossil Fueled back-up…also disproved.
Without any heat source in the rest of the house it’s better to leave the Incandescent Bulb ON in the bathroom with the door closed. I know because we have done it. It really makes a difference.
It could have a localized effect, especially in a 400 cu ft enclosed space
The dark year of 1816 written about by Jane Austen (as a result of the eruption of the volcano Tambora, in Indonesia).
“The seismic activity is part of the ongoing geological processes in the Great Rift Valley, where new oceanic crust is being generated.”
I find it hard to believe the Great Rift Valley is under the ocean….
These are small effects and rapidly controlled by the Earth’s natural control of its enrgy equilibirum which adjusts surface and atmospheric temperatures to ensure the same LWIR is returned to space as is absorbed by the atmosphere and surface. Dominant. Simples.
“Yes, in certain areas along the East African Rift Valley, particularly near the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, seawater intrusion is occurring, with the potential to eventually flood the rift valley as the tectonic plates continue to pull apart, essentially creating a new ocean…”
So parts of the valley are in fact becoming sea floor so under the ocean.
“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong” – H L Mencken
From my past reading I remember claims that only equatorial volcanoes can have significant global impacts. Isn’t it possible this volcano only impacted the NH? Maybe there were two eruptions in 1831.
I’m sure that, way back in 1831, scientists/meteorologists lacked the ability to determine average northern hemisphere surface (air) temperatures to an accuracy of even +/- 5 deg-F. Keep in mind that this was the age of sailing ships crossing the world’s oceans and that there were no established land surface temperature monitoring stations, let alone ocean buoys or floats for measuring 75% of Earth’s surface.
According to NASA, the first comprehensive global temperature monitoring network began recording data around 1880. Heck, weather balloons for measuring air temperatures above Earth’s immediate surface weren’t used prior to 1896 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_balloon ).
While the date of the Zavaritskii volcano (discussed in the above article) may be reliable, its asserted impact of an ~2 deg-F decrease “in the annual average temperatures of the Northern Hemisphere” is certainly bogus and absurd.
It’s always the last place you look.
Based on the writings of WE, I’m not convinced that volcanoes have the claimed effect.
Interesting they would identify Zavaritski as the offender with global impact. High latitude volcanoes typically don’t impact global temps as their plumes tend to be constrained by the high latitude jet streams. No global temp impact by Paektu eruption 969 AD, which is farther south than Zavaritski on Simushir Island. No global impact from 1912 Novarupta – Katmai which is farther north either. I don’t mind the aerosols and ash in the Greenland ice cores referenced as they ought to be there. I do mind the conclusion that this eruption had global impact as there are at least two others as big or bigger that didn’t. Neat that they discovered it, though. Cheers –
This mystery eruption didn’t affect England, which had warm summers in 1831 and 1832:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/legacy/data/cetml1659on.dat