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Atmospheric Mystery of 1808


taniwha

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I hope you all find this just as interesting as i did :)

http://www.science20.com/news_articles/mysterious_1808_eruption_the_real_cause_of_the_coldest_decade_of_the_last_500_years-145199

..."I spent months combing through the vast Spanish colonial archive, but it was a fruitless search – clearly the volcano wasn't in Latin America. I then turned to the writings of Colombian scientist Francisco José de Caldas, who served as Director of the Astronomical Observatory of Bogotá between 1805 and 1810. Finding his precise description of the effects of an eruption was a 'Eureka' moment."

In February 1809 Caldas wrote about a "mystery" that included a constant, stratospheric "transparent cloud that obstructs the sun's brilliance" over Bogotá, starting on the 11 December 1808 and seen across Colombia. He gave detailed observations, for example that the "natural fiery colour [of the sun] has changed to that of silver, so much so that many have mistaken it for the moon"; and that the weather was unusually cold, the fields covered with ice and the crops damaged by frost...

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It's called "volcano weather." There is an ongoing effort among dendrochronologists to track the history of volcanic eruptions through tree ring analysis.

Doug

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It's called "volcano weather." There is an ongoing effort among dendrochronologists to track the history of volcanic eruptions through tree ring analysis.

Doug

The real mystery here is no one knows exactly where is the volcano that likely caused the weather phenomena of 1808. The mystery eruption is known to have happened because ice core sampling the north and south poles provided identical isotopic evidence.

Fall-out from the ash cloud suggests it may have been located in the tropical lattitudes. Or was it undersea? Or was it on an isolated island? Or maybe it even formed an island? Intriguing to say the least.

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