'Mysterious Volcano' That Dropped World Temperatures by Practically 2 Levels Fahrenheit in 1831 Recognized – Do You Agree?
Meanwhile, Ethiopia's Great Rift volcano erupts after a seismic swarm, prompting evacuations.
Of legal insurrection
Posted by Leslie Eastman
When I write about climate change, I often note that volcanoes can have significant impacts on the global climate.
A new example was recently revealed: a “mysterious 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 violent of the 19th century and released enormous amounts of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. Earth's emissions caused average annual temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere to fall by about one degree Celsius.
The challenge in locating the volcano was due to its remote location.
While the year of this historic eruption was known, the location of the volcano was not known. Researchers recently solved this mystery by sampling ice cores in Greenland and peering into the past through the layers of the cores to examine sulfur isotopes, ash grains and tiny shards of volcanic glass deposited between 1831 and 1834.
Using geochemistry, radioactive dating and computer modeling to map the particles' trajectories, scientists linked the 1831 eruption to an island volcano in the northwest Pacific, they reported Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
..Prior to scientists' findings, the last known eruption of Zavaritskii took place in 800 BC. BC.
“For many volcanoes on Earth, particularly those in remote areas, we have a very poor understanding of their eruption history,” said lead study author Dr. William Hutchison, senior research associate at 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 the historical record is 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 ash fragments recovered from ice cores drilled in Greenland with samples from the Zavaritskii Caldera. They decided it was a perfect match.
“The search for the match took a long time and required extensive collaboration with colleagues in Japan and Russia, who sent us samples collected from these remote volcanoes decades ago,” says Hutchison.
“The moment in the lab when we analyzed the two ash pieces together, one from the volcano and one from the ice core, was a real Eureka moment. I couldn't believe the numbers were identical. After that, I spent a lot of time looking at the age and size of the eruption in the Kuril Islands records to really convince myself that the game was real.”
Meanwhile, recent volcanic activity at Mount Dofan in Ethiopia has caused widespread concern and led to evacuations in the area.
Hundreds of people in a rural part of Ethiopia, 165 km (100 miles) northeast of the capital Addis Ababa, have fled their homes in panic as a nearby volcano showed signs of a possible eruption, a local chief told England's BBC service.
The smoke that rose from Mount Dofan around 5:00 p.m. local time (2:00 GMT) on Thursday “has a fiery cloud and is 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 from the mountain.
In recent weeks, more than a dozen seismic events have occurred around Awash Fentale – an earthquake-prone area in Ethiopia's Afar region.
The seismic activity is part of ongoing geological processes in the Great Rift Valley, where new oceanic crust is being formed.
Personally, I look forward to seeing eco-activists link the divide to SUVs.
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