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Concept
1452/1453 mystery eruption
Summary
The 1452/1453 mystery eruption is an unidentified volcanic event that triggered the first large sulfate spike in the 1450s, succeeded by another spike in 1458 caused by another mysterious eruption. The eruption caused a severe volcanic winter leading to one of strongest cooling events in the Northern Hemisphere. This date also coincides with a substantial intensification of the Little Ice Age.
Early evidence of large eruption in 1450–1460 came from a massive sulfate spike recorded in ice cores in Antarctica with dating uncertainty up to a few years. Early studies in the 1990s and 2000s incorrectly placed the date of this original sulfate spike in 1452/53 on the basis of high dating uncertainty while the Kuwae caldera in Vanuatu was assigned to be the source of this incorrectly dated sulfate spike. Since 2012, high-resolution sulfate records based on accurately dated ice cores shifted the date of original, possibly Kuwae, sulfate spike to 1458 and confirmed another sulfate event in 1452/53. Therefore, the current 1452/53 eruption refers to the sulfate spike that was only recently discovered in 2012, while the old 1452/53 eruption, thought to be associated with Kuwae, referred to the sulfate spike which the date has been shifted to 1458 since 2012.
The 1452/53 sulfate spike is recorded in both Greenland and Antarctica, however, the sulfate signal in Greenland is significantly larger than that of Antarctica, suggesting a source volcano in the low latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. Sulfur isotope composition of the 1452/53 sulfate indicates that the eruption emitted volcanic gases directly into the stratosphere, with significant impact on atmospheric chemistry and potential consequence for global climate. The reconstructed volcanic stratospheric sulfur injection of the 1452/53 event estimates that about 11 trillion grams of sulfur was injected into the stratosphere, roughly one-third that of Tambora based on the same set of sulfate records.
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