Famine, desolation, cold. In 1831, a dark period began for the planet. For several years, humans have had to deal with a cooling of the planet of more than 1°C and all the consequences that this engendered. The cause of all this: a massive volcanic eruption.
For 200 years, scientists could not say precisely which of the planet’s thousands of volcanoes had caused this catastrophe. Researchers at St Andrews University in Scotland have remedied this, reports The Independent. In a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists explained how they zeroed in on the Zavaritskii volcano. This mountain, located on the uninhabited island of Simushir, in the Kuril Islands, an area disputed between Japan and Russia, would be responsible for the disaster.
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To find the culprit, Dr. Will Hutchison, lead author of the study, and his team analyzed ice cores dated 1831 and compared them to ash deposits from several volcanoes likely to have erupted in the era. Zavaritskii was a “perfect match”.
If the analysis could only be carried out recently, it is because of a technical question. “It’s only been a short time since we developed our ability to extract microscopic shards of ash from ice cores and do advanced analysis on them,” explains Dr. Will Hutchison.
Putting the Kuril Islands back at the heart of research
The correspondence is therefore no longer in doubt. And ice cores have provided further details on this massive eruption. “It was determined to have taken place in the spring or summer of 1831 and confirmed to be very explosive,” notes Dr. Will Hutchison. Very valuable information which therefore emanates from the analysis of the ice of the time, which preserved all the minerals and gases necessary to discover the secrets of the eruption.
This discovery sheds light on the Zavaritskii volcano and the Kuril Islands, which are too little studied. However, they contain numerous craters that could be useful to analyze. But the geopolitical situation of the archipelago and its forced control by Russia as a military base do not make things easy.
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