An international research team led by the University of Geneva (UNIGE) has discovered that while observing the night sky, medieval monks recorded some of the largest volcanic eruptions in history that contributed to the start of the Little Ice Age. The research was published in the journal Nature.
The Middle Ages was one of the most volcanically active periods in Earth’s history. Volcanic eruptions are believed to have led to the beginning of the Little Ice Age, a long period of global cooling.
It took researchers nearly five years to review hundreds of records from Europe, the Middle East, and Japan to look for references to total lunar eclipses and their colors on the moon, which can change due to suspended volcanic dust.
Historians have reliably documented 51 of the 64 total lunar eclipses that occurred in Europe between 1100 and 1300. In five of these cases, they also reported that the moon was extraordinarily dark.
Scientists have discovered that such dark moons are observed within a year of major volcanic eruptions. Geologists noted that science has learned a lot about these eruptions because of the traces they left on the ice of Antarctica and Greenland. By combining information about Antarctica’s ice cores and descriptions from medieval texts, they were able to clarify the dates of the largest eruptions.
Such eruptions lowered summer temperatures and limited the access of sunlight to the Earth’s surface, which could lead to the death of crops. Not surprisingly, eclipses were seen as harbingers of trouble, although medieval people did not associate them with volcanic eruptions.
Source: Gazeta
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