Ice core evidence for an explosive tropical volcanic eruption 6 years preceding Tambora

Abstract

High‐resolution analyses of ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland reveal an explosive volcanic eruption in the tropics in A.D. 1809 which is not reflected in the historical record. A comparison in the same ice cores of the sulfate flux from the A.D. 1809 eruption to that from the Tambora eruption (A.D. 1815) indicates a near‐equatorial location and a magnitude roughly half that of Tambora. Thus this event should be considered comparable to other eruptions producing large volumes of sulfur‐rich gases such as Coseguina, Krakatau, Agung, and El Chichón. The increase in the atmospheric concentration of sulfuric acid may have contributed to the northern hemisphere cooling observed in the early nineteenth century and may account partially for the decline in surface temperatures which preceded the eruption of Tambora in A.D. 1815.

A Tree-Ring Based Late Summer Temperature Reconstruction (AD 1675–1980) for the Northeastern Mediterranean

“…One of the coldest NEMED decades, 1810-1818, occurs as a cold decade in many other regional ( Figure 5 and Klesse et al 2014), central European (Büntgen et al 2006;Zumbühl et al 2008;Böhm et al 2010), and large-scale (Briffa et al 1998;Franke et al 2011) summer temperature records. The extreme cold during this decade can be explained by a combination of low solar irradiance (Dalton minimum, AD 1790-1830, Stuiver 1961Bard et al 2000) and the cooling effect of two major volcanic eruptions (Dai et al 1991;Wagner and Zorita 2005), including the well-documented 1815 Tambora eruption (Stothers 1984;Briffa et al 1998;Robertson et al 2001;Oppenheimer 2003). Other manifestations of external (volcanic and solar) forcing of NEMED temperature variability include the 1675-1680 cold period that occurred during the Maunder solar minimum (Eddy 1976) and volcanic eruptions in 1835 (Cosiguina), 1883 (Krakatoa), and 1912 (Novarupta) that resulted in below-average NEMED summer temperatures.…”

Ice core and palaeoclimatic evidence for the timing and nature of the great mid‐13th century volcanic eruption

“…Also, there are more recent eruptions evident from ice core records that have not yet been identified (e.g. a large, probably tropical eruption in 1809; Dai et al, 1991). The kinds of sensible phenomena associated with the AD 1257 eruption can be gauged from the contemporary records of eruptions such as Tambora 1815 and Krakatau 1883.…”

Millennium-long summer temperature variations in the European Alps as reconstructed from tree rings

“…The pronounced cooling of summer temperatures, during the period 1805-1820, recorded in Alpine glacier advances (Holzhauser et al, 2005;Zumbühl et al, 2008), is characterized by a sequence of larger volcanic eruptions: in 1808, with unknown location (Dai et al, 1991), in 1813 in Awu, Soufriere, St. Vincent, Suwanose-Jima (Büntgen et al, 2006a) and in 1815 in Tambora/Indonesia (Sigurdsson and Carey, 1989;Crowley, 2000;Oppenheimer, 2003). Happening during the Dalton solar minimum, these eruptions most likely lead to an accumulated aerosol cooling effect (Esper et al, 2007).…”