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How Did the Summer Go? David M news and views Volcanoes How did the summer go? David M. Pyle he summer of 1601 was, by all occur only once or twice a century, and are 100 YEARS AGO accounts, truly awful. Across England, often followed by a widespread, but short- One of the elephants in Barnum and “the month of June was very colde, lived, climate response caused by the vol- Bailey’s Show, which has been visiting T 1 frosts every morning” . It was a similar story canic pollution. Volcanic sulphur dioxide Liverpool during the past two weeks, 8 in northern Italy, where freezing weather injected into the stratosphere oxidizes to having recently shown signs of extended into July, and the sky was ‘overcast’ form a sulphate aerosol layer that coarsens insubordination, Mr. Bailey determined, in for much of the year2. Iceland and Scandi- slowly, and drifts around the globe. This order to perfectly safeguard his visitors, navia also apparently experienced unseason- aerosol layer intercepts incoming solar radi- to sacrifice the animal. He has had during al weather. Just another poor northern ation, disturbing Earth’s surface tempera- his life occasion to destroy many European summer? It seems not. tures. The mid-latitudes of the Northern elephants, which, as a rule, he has Papers by Briffa et al.3 and de Silva and Hemisphere seem to be particularly sensitive handed over to experienced veterinary Zielinski4 (pages 450 and 455 of this issue) to the effects of large eruptions6, experienc- and other surgeons, who have tried now reveal the true scale of this cold summer ing slight winter warming and marked various methods, such as poisoning, and the reasons for it. Patterns of tree growth summer cooling as a result. Eventually, after shooting and bleeding. All have proved, across the Northern Hemisphere, analysed transport to the poles, the sulphate aerosol however, unsatisfactory, because by Briffa et al., confirm that the summer of may be preserved in accumulations of snow. uncertain, tedious and not seldom 1601 was by far the coldest of the past 600 In detail, the time taken for sulphate to dangerous to those engaged in years, and about 0.8 7C cooler than the disperse from the tropics to higher latitudes conducting the operations. On this summer mean for the period 1881–1960. depends on the phase of the stratospheric occasion it was determined, after The cause is identified as a spectacular erup- ‘quasi-biennial oscillation’7. Under some consultation with several experts and with tion of the volcano Huaynaputina in Peru in conditions, aerosols can be stored within a the Secretary of the Royal Society for the February 1600. Fieldwork4,5 now shows that tropical stratospheric reservoir for a year or Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, to kill Huaynaputina (Fig. 1) was one of the largest two before being transported to higher lati- the elephant by strangulation, which had eruptions of the past few centuries. In their tudes. This introduces a time lag between once before been adopted with success paper, de Silva and Zielinski calculate that it large eruptions in the tropics and their effects by Mr. Bailey. Accordingly it was arranged threw out nearly 10 km3 of molten rock, and at mid- to high latitudes. It also reduces the that on a recent Sunday morning — the left prominent records of sulphate pollution chance of identifying the source of any day most suitable to the Show people in polar ice-cores. For comparison, the individual sulphate peak in polar ice-cores and that freest from intrusion by the damaging eruption of Mount Pinatubo, — which can only be done by matching public — Don, as the doomed elephant, Philippines, in 1991, involved about 5 km3 of the compositions of the accompanying who was supposed to be about twenty- magma, whereas that of El Chichón, Mexico, fragments of volcanic glass with a known two years of age and nearly 4 1/2 tons in in 1982 involved about 1.3 km3 of magma. eruption4,8. If volcanic ash is held above the weight, was named, should be strangled. Eruptions of the scale of Huaynaputina tropics for long enough, the ash particles will From Nature 2 June 1898. 50 YEARS AGO A valuable means of bringing about active co-operation between industry and A & G. A. ZIELINSKI the universities has recently been shown V by the United Steel Companies, Ltd. At the invitation of the chairman, Sir Walter S. L. DE SIL Benton Jones, fourteen mechanical and production engineering professors from British universities spent four days … in visiting the branches of the United Steel Companies at Sheffield, Scunthorpe and Stocksbridge, and in joint discussion both at the various works and at the Sheffield headquarters. ... [T]he research staff of the United Steel Companies were grateful for suggestions thrown out by the professors, while the latter were appreciative of the new problems put to them and which, in some cases, could usefully be followed up by them and their Figure 1 Craters of Huaynaputina, in the Peruvian Andes. This was the site of one of the largest research staffs. By arranging this tour the eruptions of the past few centuries, in February 1600. From their reconstruction of the extensive United Steel Companies have shown a deposits of volcanic ash around the volcano, de Silva and Zielinski4 calculate that this eruption threw way in which industry and scholarship out nearly 10 km3 of molten rock. Briffa et al.3 have studied patterns of tree growth, which show that can work together for their mutual help the following summer of 1601 was the coldest of the past 600 years across the Northern Hemisphere. and the well-being of British economy. Sulphate pollution in polar ice-cores from the same time suggests that the eruption of Huaynaputina From Nature 5 June 1948. was directly responsible for this widespread cooling. NATURE | VOL 393 | 4 JUNE 1998 415 Nature © Macmillan Publishers Ltd 1998 news and views instructive. This eruption released more sul- significant, eruptions that remain undiscov- 20 phur than Tambora, leading to a thick ‘dry ered from the remoter areas of the Pacific fog’ that spread across northern Europe. rim. 15 However, because most of the pollution was It took the combination of several differ- restricted to the troposphere, cooling effects ent, highly time-resolved approaches (tree- 10 were locally severe but not hemisphere-wide, ring and ice-core records) and field study to and the summer of 1783 ranks only twenty- unravel the story of the summer of 1601. sixth in the record of extreme low tree-ring The largest volcanic eruptions need not be 5 9 eruptions per century density. responsible for the largest sulphur releases , Number of `large' explosive Number of `large' The association of the two most extreme however, and none of the direct or indir8ect 0 summers, 1601 and 1816, with known erup- indicators of past volcanism is complete, so Japan tions suggests that some of the other cold reading the record of past eruptions and Russia, Central, Melansia summers might also have volcanic causes. their climatic effects poses a continuing New Zealand United States Southeast Asia South America Indeed, many of these, notably 1641–43, challenge. Europe, Iceland, 1695 and 1698, match periods with increased David M. Pyle is in the Department of Earth Figure 2 A compilation of the numbers of levels of sulphate in polar ice-cores8. This is Sciences, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, reported10 ‘large’ explosive volcanic eruptions the ‘smoking gun’ that implicates volcanic Cambridge CB2 3EQ, UK. — those with a volcanic explosivity index of 4 or eruptions as the cooling agent. e-mail: [email protected] more — during the past four centuries. (Red, But which eruption? Tens of volcanoes 1. Stow, J. The Annales of England Increased and Continued Until twentieth; green, nineteenth; dark blue, erupt explosively every year. Most of them This Present Yeare 1605 (London, 1605). eighteenth; light blue, seventeenth.) Whereas are too small to have any climatic effect, even 2. Pavese, M. P., Banzon, V., Colacino, M., Gregori, G. P. & areas with long historical records (Europe, though they might be locally devastating, Pasqua, M. in Climate since A.D. 1500 (eds Bradley, R. S. & Jones, P. D.) 155–170 (Routledge, London, 1992). Iceland and Japan) experience eruptions at a and thereby spawn a rich historical written 3. Briffa, K. R., Jones, P. D., Schweingruber, F. H. & Osborn, T. J. constant rate, other areas apparently do not, record. Unfortunately, the catalogue of Nature 393, 450–455 (1998). 10 showing that the record for these other regions known eruptions rapidly becomes incom- 4. de Silva, S. & Zielinski, G. A. Nature 393, 455–458 (1998). is grossly incomplete. There were probably plete further back in time. A glance at the 5. Thouret, J.-C. et al. C. R. Acad. Sci. 325, 931–938 (1997). several tens of, as yet, unknown mid- to high- known ‘large’ eruptions of the past 400 years 6. Robock, A. & Mao, J. J. Clim. 8, 1086–1103 (1995). 7. Trepte, C. R. & Hitchman, M. H. Nature 355, 626–628 (1992). latitude eruptions in Kamchatka, the Kurile (Fig. 2) shows that, because eruptions in 8. Zielinski, G. A. J. Geophys. Res. 100, 20937–20955 (1995). islands and Alaska between the seventeenth and areas with long historical records occur at a 9. Rampino, M. R. & Self, S. Nature 310, 677–679 (1984). nineteenth centuries. The seventeenth- and more or less constant rate, there must be 10.Simkin, T. & Siebert, L. Volcanoes of the World (Geoscience eighteenth-century records of tropical eruptions many tens of ‘large’, and potentially globally Press, Tucson, AZ, 1994). in Southeast Asia and Central and South America are also far from complete.
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