The year is 1831. The new London Bridge has just been ceremoniously opened, The Liberator has been published in Boston for the first time, and researchers are on the first expedition to the North Pole. The 254th pope has just been appointed, a young Charles Darwin is aboard the HMS Beagle, and the very first electric generator has been unveiled.
You’ve enjoyed a nice bowl of porridge for breakfast and, after closing the door behind you as you leave for work, you look up at the sky. A chill runs through your body as you realise that something is severely amiss. Not only is it colder than usual, there’s an unusual hue to the outside world.
When you look up at the sky, you get more questions than answers.
The Sun – that dependable source of warmth and light and energy – is blue.
And almost 200 years later, scientists at the University of St Andrews in Scotland have found the source of this unusual phenomenon that cast an otherworldly blue haze over the Northern Hemisphere, causing the sun to appear blue – or in some cases green or purple – and led to 1°C of global cooling.
While this doesn’t sound like much, this worldwide chill had devastating effects on the global population, with months of unseasonably cold weather causing huge crop failures, plunging societies into famine and individuals into poverty.
According to a statement from the University of St Andrews, while it has long been understood that a volcano was at the root of the planet’s troubles, the specific volcanic eruption had not been identified, and was the source of much contention within the scientific community.
However, Dr Will Hutchinson from the University’s School of Earth and Environmental Science has made the breakthrough discovery that explains exactly when and how this phenomenon took place.
Through detailed examination of polar ice cores, Dr Hutchinson and his team were able to identify the volcano that filled the atmosphere with sulfuric gas, causing the global cooling as the sun’s light was reflected back into space.
The volcano in question, the team reveal in an article published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was Zavaritskii, located in the Kuril Islands.
If you’ve never heard of Zavaritskii or the Kuril Islands, you’re not alone.
The Kuril Islands – controlled by Russia – are part of a territory that is disputed by Japan and Russia. The particular island that Zavaritskii is located on – Simushir – was used as a strategic outpost and nuclear submarine dock for the Soviets during the Cold War.
However, Simushir’s role in human history is much greater, with its resident volcano now matched by the researchers through a series of intricate processes, as Dr Hutchinson explained in the statement:
“Only in recent years have we developed the ability to extract microscopic ash shards from polar ice cores and conduct detailed chemical analyses on them. These shards are incredibly minute, roughly one-tenth the diameter of a human hair.
We analysed the chemistry of the ice at a very high temporal resolution. This allowed us to pinpoint the precise timing of the eruption to spring-summer 1831, confirm that it was highly explosive, and then extract the tiny shards of ash. 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.”
But when Dr Hutchinson discovered the match, bringing hundreds of years of scientific debate to a close, he was close to disbelief:
“The moment in the lab when we analysed 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.”
While Dr Hutchinson and his team have made a huge stride in our understanding of our climatic past, he explains that much greater benefits and implications of the study extend into our planetary future.
And that’s because, as the research highlights, there is still so much that we don’t know about volcanoes in regions like the Kuril Islands.
Given the global devastation caused by Zavaritskii’s eruption, our understanding of these volcanoes is paramount if were are to safeguard our planet, climate, and wellbeing should such an event occur again, as Hutchinson explains:
“There are so many volcanoes like this, which highlights how difficult it will be to predict when or where the next large-magnitude eruption might occur.
As scientists and as a society, we need to consider how to coordinate an international response when the next large eruption, like the one in 1831, happens.”
This research, of course, brings us closer to that ideal level of understanding.
And while it might have been quite the sight to behold, it’s worth crossing our fingers in hope that the sun never turns blue again.
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