What really happened in 1831? Until then, we only knew that a volcano had erupted, causing a global cooling of around 1°C. The phenomenon caused crop failures and famines throughout the world. Neither the exact identity of the volcano nor the precise date on which it erupted was known, which has long sparked a number of debates within the scientific community.
Until, at the end of 2024, researchers from the University of St Andrews (Scotland) claim to have solved the mystery, tells us the British daily The Independent. This would be the Zavaritskii volcano, located on the isolated and uninhabited island of Simushir, which is part of the Kuril archipelago, a territory disputed between Russia and Japan.
Currently controlled by the Russians, the island in the Sea of Okhotsk functions as a strategic military outpost. During the Cold War, the Soviets used Simushir as a secret nuclear submarine base, docking the ships in a flooded volcanic crater. The eruption would have occurred in spring or summer, researchers at the University of St Andrews believe.
Little-studied islands
This brand new study led by Will Hutchison, from the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, reveals how ice cores – that is, samples taken from ice sheets – were analyzed. A perfect match between these cores and the ash reports was identified. The investigation, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, allowed Will Hutchison and his team to precisely date the ice core deposits and match them with the Zavaritskii volcano.
“Only in recent years have we developed the ability to extract microscopic ash shards from polar ice cores and carry out detailed chemical analyses. These shards are incredibly tiny, about a tenth the diameter of a human hair.vulgarise Will Hutchison.
The fact that the Kuril Islands are very little studied, even though they are very volcanic, has made research laborious, as the researcher explains: “Finding the match took a long time and required extensive collaboration with colleagues in Japan and Russia, who sent us samples collected from these remote volcanoes decades ago.”
While we avoided a global catastrophe in 1831, we may not be entirely out of the woods. According to researchers, the eruption of a volcano in California, Iceland or Indonesia could wreak havoc on Earth, humanity not being prepared enough to face this rare and devastating phenomenon.
Source: www.slate.fr
