“Solving Some Mysteries about Historic Volcanic Eruptions

E2C Workshops featuring Dallas AbbottUpdated 4 May 2019

Mauna Kea. Mauna Loa, Kilawea, and other Hawaiian volcanoes

https://www.soest.hawaii.edu/GG/HCV/maunaloa.html

Erebus, Antarctica http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/erebus

Submarine volcanoes

• 8,000 known volcanic eruptions in the last 10,000 years

• Only about 300 were submarine

• From 1975 to 1985, 160 volcanoes erupted

• Only 24 were submarine

• Mid-Ocean Ridges produces an estimated 75% of the annual output of magma

• “Black smokers”

http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/submarine

Shiprock and other extinct volcanoes of the US Southwest

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Shiprock.snodgrass3.jpg

http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/navajo-volcanic-field

What part of Eyjafjallajökull can’t you understand?(aye -ya fyah dla jow kudl)

The ‘original’ geyser

Bjarngerður (l) and Rögnvaldur (r), two of the “Hidden People” of Iceland(my hiking sticks shown for scale)

Pinatubo’s impact and worldwide effects (1991)

https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/toms-satellite-image-showing-how-ash-had-circled-globe-30-jun-91

Mt St Helens (1980)https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/volcanoes/st_helens/

https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/volcanoes/st_helens/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_eruption_of_Mount_St._Helens#/media/File:MSH80_eruption_mount_st_helens_05-18-80-dramatic-edit.jpg

Japanese volcanoes

Krakatau (not Krakatoa) (1883)http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/krakatau

https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/day-historic-krakatau-eruption-1883http://www.indonesia-tourism.com/banten/krakatoa-volcano.html

Tambora (1815) and “The Year without Summer”

• Largest observed eruption in recorded history

• >71,000 deaths

• “Eighteen hundred and froze to death”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer

This is what you get when writers are cooped up in a cold vacation house in Italy in 1816

• Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (1797-1851), later Mary Shelley, devised this Gothic novel in 1816 while staying at Lake Geneva with Lord Byron, John Polidori, Claire Clairmont and her future husband Percy Bysshe Shelley.

• Byron proposed that the group should write ghost stories. The text was penned at a time when scientists were investigating the possibility of regenerating corpses with electricity.

Novarupta-Katmai in the Valley of the 10,000 Smokes, AlaskaSite of a major eruption in 1912

https://www.livescience.com/58427-mount-etna-volcano-eruptions-photos.html

https://www.earthmagazine.org/article/benchmarks-march-17-1944-most-recent-eruption-mount-vesuvius

1944Eruption

Many 18th – 19th

Century buildings were influenced by the discovery of the Roman buildings in Pompeii

“Neoclassical style”

http://revolverwarholgallery.com/portfolio/vesuvius-365/

What gases are emitted in a volcanic eruption?

• H2O

• CO2

• SOx (sulfur oxides)

• H2O

• HF

• HBr

• HCl

https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/vhp/gas.html

How Can Volcanic Emissions Impact the Earth

• Dust and other particles can block/reflect sunlight

• Reduce temperatures worldwide

• High carbon dioxide cpncentrations can be fatal

• Sulfur compounds irritate the eyes, skin, and respiratory systems

• Hydrogen sulphides irritate the respiratory system, cause pulmonary edema

• Hydrogen halides can dissolve to form acidic rain

Tree rings can preserve the

record of damaged growing

conditions

Damaged tree rings

536-538 A.D.

What Documentary Evidence Exists for c. 535 AD?

• The Byzantine historian Procopius recorded of 536, “…the sun gave forth its light without brightness ... and it seemed like the sun in eclipse, for the beams it shed were not clear".

• The Gaelic Irish Annals record:

• "A failure of bread in the year 536 AD" – the Annals of Ulster

• "A failure of bread from the years 536–539 AD" – the Annals of Inisfallen

Other independent contemporary sources:

• Low temperatures, even snow during the summer (snow reportedly fell in August in China during the Northern and Southern dynasties, which caused the harvest there to be delayed)

• "A dense, dry fog" in the Middle East, China and Europe

• Drought in Peru, which affected the Moche culture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_weather_events_of_535%E2%80%93536

How can we trace the source areas of ancient volcanic eruptions?