{"id":252514,"date":"2023-04-12T12:33:20","date_gmt":"2023-04-12T10:33:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=252514"},"modified":"2023-04-12T12:33:24","modified_gmt":"2023-04-12T10:33:24","slug":"medieval-writings-on-lunar-eclipses-may-help-date-volcanic-eruptions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=252514","title":{"rendered":"Medieval writings on lunar eclipses may help date volcanic eruptions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Tallbloke’s Talkshop<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0April 10, 2023 by\u00a0oldbrew<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A climate detective story.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

H\/T Paul Vaughan
\u2013 \u2013 \u2013
When medieval monks were looking up at the night sky, writing down their observations of celestial objects, they had no idea that their words would be invaluable centuries later to a group of scientists in a completely different field: volcanology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A new study published Wednesday<\/a> in the peer-reviewed journal Nature explains how descriptions of lunar eclipses by monks and scribes were key in studying some of the largest volcanic eruptions on Earth, says CTV News<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using a combination of these medieval writings and climate data stretching back centuries, researchers were able to clarify the date of around 10 volcanic eruptions that took place between the year 1100 and 1300.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was listening to Pink Floyd\u2019s Dark Side of the Moon album when I realized that the darkest lunar eclipses all occurred within a year or so of major volcanic eruptions,\u201d lead author S\u00e9bastien Guillet, senior research associate at the Institute for environmental sciences at the UNIGE, said in a press release<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSince we know the exact days of the eclipses, it opened the possibility of using the sightings to narrow down when the eruptions must have happened.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Researchers say that getting a more accurate date for these Earth-shattering events could help paint a clearer picture of how volcanos contribute to extreme climate variability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HOW LUNAR ECLIPSES CONNECT TO VOLCANOS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why look at writings about lunar eclipses to find out about volcanic eruptions? Well, many historical eruptions during that time period went unrecorded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We know that they happened \u2014 prior to this study, scientists used sedimentary traces in ice shelves in Antarctica and Greenland to establish that the time period between 1100 and 1300 was one of the most volcanically active time periods of the past 2,500 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lack of eyewitness accounts for the majority of these could be due to a combination of records not surviving, the Earth being less populated, and the vast dust clouds that spread for thousands of kilometres after a big enough eruption, perhaps registering only as poor weather, and not notable enough to be recorded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, dust in the atmosphere that wasn\u2019t very noticeable during daytime would have shown up in writings about eclipses, researchers theorized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Usually a total lunar eclipse leaves the moon appearing rust-red in the sky, still visible due to light from the sun bending around the Earth even though Earth\u2019s shadow is blocking most of the light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This meant that if any historical writings described darker eclipses than normal, they could be a sign of recent volcanic activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For five years, researchers scoured medieval records, searching for descriptions of eclipses that seemed out of the ordinary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monks and scribes from across Europe, the Middle East and East Asia kept detailed descriptions of lunar eclipses, down to the coloration during these spectacular events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Researchers noted that it helped that many religious texts used a blood-red moon to prophesize coming calamities, which would\u2019ve been on the mind of ancient scribes and monks when they took great pains to describe the moon\u2019s hue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scientists have been able to predict lunar eclipses with mathematical precision for centuries based on the movements of the sun, the Earth and the moon. These patterns mean we also have pinpointed dates for eclipses that occurred long before anyone was carefully tracking them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Europe, we know there were 64 total lunar eclipses that occurred between 1100 and 1300. Of these 64 confirmed eclipses, 51 had been described in medieval writings in detail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Five of these reported that the moon was very dark in the sky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Japanese scribe also wrote about an unusually dark eclipse in early December of 1229, writing that \u201cthe old folk had never seen it like this time, with the location of the disk of the moon not visible, just as if it had disappeared during the eclipse\u2026 It was truly something to fear.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CLIMATE DATA CONFIRMING VOLCANIC WINTERS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To confirm the theory that the darker eclipses described in these centuries-old texts could have been affected by volcanic clouds, researchers cross-referenced them with existing climate data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe only knew about these eruptions because they left traces in the ice of Antarctica and Greenland,\u201d Clive Oppenheimer, professor at the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge, said in the release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBy putting together the information from ice cores and the descriptions from medieval texts we can now make better estimates of when and where some of the biggest eruptions of this period occurred.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Full article here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A climate detective story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":252518,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691818326,691818252,691818331,691818329,691818330],"class_list":["post-252514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-antarctica","tag-greenland","tag-lunar-eclipses","tag-medieval","tag-volcanology","fallback-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/0Four_Total_Lunar_Eclipses_2_sm.jpg?fit=2000%2C1993&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-13GO","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":369333,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=369333","url_meta":{"origin":252514,"position":0},"title":"Medieval Warm Period Undeniable, pronounced in Antarctica and Poland, 2 New Studies Show","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"03\/10\/2025","format":false,"excerpt":"The Medieval Warm Period, the natural warm phase between 700 and 1300 AD, cannot be reproduced climate models because the simulations react primarily to CO2. 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