Nice article. Typical of the source. To whit:
The team also found evidence of two subsequent eruption events in the years 540 and 547. According to the researchers, the combined pollution from this volcanic triple-whammy did more than just block the sun and cool Earth — it may well have set Europe up for a period of death and decline that lasted 100 years.
The highlighted part is from the Fox reporter. Nowhere in any of the linked articles does it say anything remotely similar.
"The first eruptive episode in 535 CE or early 536 CE injected large amounts of sulfate and ash into the atmosphere, apparently in the Northern Hemisphere. Geochemistry of tephra filtered from the NEEM-2011-S1 ice core at a depth corresponding to 536 CE indicated multiple North American volcanoes as likely candidates for a com-bined volcanic signal (Extended Data Fig. 5, Methods, Supplementary Data 5). Historical observations (Extended Data Table 3) identified atmospheric dimming as early as 24 March 536 CE, and lasting up to 18 months."
"The second eruptive episode in 539 CE or 540 CE, identified in both Greenland and Antarctica ice-core records and hence probably trop-ical in origin, resulted in up to 10% higher global aerosol loading than the Tambora 1815 eruption reconstructed from our bipolar sulfate records. Summer temperatures consequently dropped again, by 1.4–2.7 uC in Europe in 541 CE3, and cold temperatures persisted in
the Northern Hemisphere until almost 550 CE."
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So the "…may well have set Europe up for a period of death and decline that lasted 100 years" seems to be over exuberant reporting. And the dates don't even jive. The actual scientists say the 536 CE eruption had effects for the next year and a half, and the second, presumably more severe 539 CE blast, had effects that lasted almost a decade.
Yup, little old Iceland brought on the Dark Ages and contributed greatly to Justinian Plague…..
Most historians characterize the Dark Ages as starting almost 100 years earlier than these eruptions.
I know this is Mithmee writing this. From the quote above the article author doesn't claim any correlation between the colder temperatures and the onset of the plague. He just mentions that the plague occurred 5 years after the second eruption.
The plague, from Yersinia Pestis, relies on two cycles (an Enzootic and a Zoonotic cycle). Both these cycles are actually suppressed by colder weather. The fleas do not grow as well in a colder, dryer climate. Same with the rats. Here is a good article describing the relationship between climate and Bubonic Plague:
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Reading this makes one a bit reticent to assigning these eruptions as "contributing greatly" to anything beyond colder weather.
Makes one wonder if cold climate had anything to do with the great Bubonic Plague (The Black Death) that ravaged Europe in the mid 1300's. Looks like the opposite actually. Since we have isolated the DNA from Black Death victims and matched them to today's strains, we know the disease started in the East and moved west by fleas and rodent migrations. Here is a good explanation of the Medieval epidemics and the relationship to climate.
Correlation does not equal causation.
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And finally, I noticed when you think that the proxy science supports your confirmation bias then it is fine. When the proxy science goes against your preconceived ideas then "proxy science is NOT real science".
From a link from within your link:
"Ice cores provide a robust reconstruction of past climate. However, development of timescales by annual-layer counting, essential to detailed climate reconstruction and interpretation, on ice cores collected at low-accumulation sites or in regions of compressed ice, is problematic due to closely spaced layers. Ice-core analysis by laser ablation–inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) provides sub-millimeter-scale sampling resolution (on the order of 100 μm in this study) and the low detection limits (ng L−1) necessary to measure the chemical constituents preserved in ice cores."
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Looks like proxy science to me……the same ice core stuff you are on record as dismissing in previous discussions.
