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A cluster of major stratospheric eruptions at the end of the Little Ice Age: new insights from polar ice core records

William Hutchison1 , Patrick Sugden1, Andrea Burke1, Peter Abbott2, Anders Svensson3, Nathan J. Chellman4, Joseph R. McConnell4, Siwan Davies5, Michael Sigl2 and Gill Plunkett6

  • Affiliations: 1School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK; 2Climate and Environmental Physics & Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland; 3Centre for Ice and Climate, Section for the Physics of Ice, Climate, and Earth, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, 2200, Denmark; 4Division of Hydrologic Sciences, Desert Research Institute, Reno, Nevada, USA; 5Department of Geography, College of Science, Swansea University, Swansea, Wales, UK; 6Archaeology & Palaeoecology, School of Natural and Built Environment, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, UK 

  • Presentation type: Poster

  • Presentation time: Monday 16:30 - 18:30, Room Poster Hall

  • Poster Board Number: 5

  • Programme No: 6.1.11

  • Theme 6 > Session 1

Abstract

The final phase of the Little Ice Age, 1800--1850, is the coldest period in the last 500 years and is marked by a cluster of major volcanic events. These include the 1815 eruption of Tambora (Indonesia), the 1835 eruption of Cosegüina (Nicaragua), and two unidentified eruptions in 1808/9 and 1831. Although these events have been linked to climate cooling, major uncertainties remain about the mass and injection height of sulfur and, crucially, the source of the mystery eruptions.  Polar ice cores can provide detailed information about historical volcanic emissions. Here, we undertake a high time resolution sulfur isotopic and cryptotephra analysis of the 1800--1850 period. Our results show clear sulfur isotope (Δ33S) anomalies for all volcanic events which indicate stratospheric S injections. 1815 and 1835 show a large time-evolving Δ33S signal, consistent with a single low-latitude eruption and the known source volcanoes (i.e., Cosegüina and Tambora). For 1831, Δ33S suggests a Northern Hemisphere eruption and through cryptotephra correlation we are able to link this to a major Plinian eruption of Zavaritskii, a remote nested caldera located in the Kurils (between Japan and Russia). For 1808/9, Δ33S is more muted and shows a complex time-evolving pattern suggestive of multiple eruptions. Importantly, ice core cryptotephra corroborate this hypothesis and suggest distinct geochemical tephra populations around this time. These data offer exciting insights into the source and style of these major volcanic events and provide essential new input for climate models to examine whether this eruption cluster prolonged the Little Ice Age.