Disaster Goes Global
The eruption in 1600 of a seemingly quiet volcano in Peru changed global climate and triggered famine as far away as Russia
By Sid Perkins
Small disturbances can eventually have immense consequences. In the namesake example of the butterfly effect, the vortex spun from a butterfly’s wing creates tiny changes in the atmosphere that result in a hurricane half a world away. While that’s theoretically possible, no one has yet tried to blame the insect world for triggering a cyclone.
But a strong link does exist between the small particles suspended high in Earth’s atmosphere, such as those spewed from erupting volcanoes, and the overall climate down at the planet’s surface. High-altitude aerosols, especially in large numbers, block sunlight from reaching the ground and scatter it back into space, thereby cooling the planet for months or even years (SN: 2/18/06, p. 110). The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, for example, caused the global average temperature to briefly drop about 0.4 degrees Celsius. The eruption of Indonesia’s Tambora in 1815 triggered agricultural failures in North America and Europe, caused the worst famine of the 19th century and cooled the planet so much that 1816 became known as “the year without a summer.”
While many eruptions in historic times caused real climatic changes, previously only Tambora had been linked to significant social disruptions, says Kenneth Verosub, a geophysicist at the University of California, Davis. Now, however, analyses by Verosub and colleague Jake Lippman suggest a connection between the 1600 eruption of Huaynaputina, a little-known peak in Peru, and one of the greatest famines ever to strike Russia.