Island on Fire

Hello,

as I mentioned earlier, the final version of our SO₂ paper came out. Great!

Lately, I have been reading about another Icelandic volcanic eruption — Laki A.D. 1783.

Laki was a volcanic eruption that ”turned eighteenth-century Europe dark”. It cause death and famine across Europe and Egypt and was ”so devastating people ate their own shoes”.

Recently, Anja Schmidt has estimated that if a similar eruption would occur today, approximately 142,000 additional cardiopulmonary fatalities (with a 95% confidence interval of 52,000–228,000) could occur in Europe.

The book, Island on Fire, is quite a good read. In addition to Laki, it also discusses about volcanic eruptions in general.

In the book there was one very powerful image from BerkeleyEarth.org

The figure shows quite nicely what is the impact of a ”large” volcanic eruption on ”average Earth land temperature” and how long does it last. Locally, the impact can of course be much greater. And we can even have a ”year without summer”.

Ciao,
Janne