Alaska's Mount Churchill volcano in 1948. Credit: Alaska Volcano Observatory/US Army-Air Force
Posted on 10/17/2014 10:53:40 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Alaska's Mount Churchill volcano erupted some 1,200 years ago, spreading ash from Canada to Germany...
Mount Churchill is also an impressive volcano, the tallest on land in the United States and one of the towering, snowy peaks of Alaska's Wrangell-St. Elias Mountains. But Churchill's blast in A.D. 843 ejected just 12 cubic miles (50 cubic km) of ash, a layer now called the White River Ash, according to the new study, published in the September 2014 issue of the journal Geology...
If moderate volcanic eruptions can spread ash for thousands of miles, then these blowouts may be more hazardous than scientists think...
The good news is volcanic eruptions of Mount Churchill's size strike only once every 100 years, on average...
The White River discovery also means scientists may start hunting for the origin of mysterious volcanic shards on other continents, instead of close to home... For example, some archaeologically important ash layers in Central America have never been tied to a specific eruption...
By the time the White River ash crossed the Atlantic, it was simply a few sprinkles of microscopic glass shards, not a thick, hefty layer as in Canada's Yukon Territory... study co-author Sean Pyne-O'Donnell, also at Queen's University, discovered the right clue in a Newfoundland, Canada, peat bog.
At first, Pyne-O'Donnell thought the bog would hold Iceland ash, because Newfoundland is closer to the Atlantic island of Iceland than to the Pacific's ring of fire. But the bog instead held ash from Mount Churchill, Mount Mazama (Crater Lake) in Oregon, Mount St. Helens (Washington), and Alaska's Mount Augustine and Mount Aniakchak. The findings were the first step in connecting the White River Ash to Europe's cryptic AD860B tephra.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Alaska's Mount Churchill volcano in 1948. Credit: Alaska Volcano Observatory/US Army-Air Force
The Dark Ages? :') This is a two-list ping topic, and will make an excellent Digest selection, one day early.
Did they think it was in British North American at the time they named it?
Churchill had an American mother and was the first person granted honorary USA citizenship by congress
Wow... if that happened today... the libs will blame the Tea Party.
The good news is volcanic eruptions of Mount Churchill’s size strike only once every 100 years, on average...
***
Okay, Becky, if you say so.
Solution: ban all volcanoes. Now.
And Palin
Wait until Yellowstone goes.
That should tell us something about how reliable volcanology is. :’)
Or veterans, or the 1 percent, or the Jews, or Israel, or Sarah Palin.
Okay, so, wth...
Material linked to ancient volcanic eruption in Alaska
Alaska Science Forum | Thursday, January 17, 2013 | Ned Rozell
Posted on 1/19/2013 11:13:22 AM by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2979827/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/mountaniakchak/index
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/may191780/index
Alaska braces for possible volcanic eruption
http://freerepublic.com/focus/news/1545904/posts
Or Jellystone.
And how ditzy some reporters are.
Years ago I wondered why the Carolingian Empire faded after Charlemagne and then led into the Dark Ages. Then I read a book on nutrition and history. There it explained that in the 100 years after the Emperors death there were over 30 major climate disruptions that led to famine and starvation, some of which last 2 or 3 years. Strange climate caused ergot fungus on rye in northern Europe, and wheat rust in southern Europe played counterpart. Charlemagne died in 814. Mt. Churchill blew in 843, so no doubt was one of the impactors. I will look for others tomorrow.
If you read the article, the “blanket of ash” was vanishingly thin. It is unlikely to have had any significant impact at all in Europe, other than some pretty sunsets. David Key tried to attribute the 6th c “dark ages” onset to a volcano eruption in SE Asia I think it was. That would be even less destructive, unless an even bigger eruption (and much bigger) had taken place, and gone unremarked in, for example, annalists in India and China.
a few small keywords, sorted chrono, with duplicates out:
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