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Volcanic dust veils from sixth century tree-ring isotopes linked to reduced irradiance, primary production and human health
The large volcanic eruptions of AD 536 and 540 led to climate cooling and contributed to hardships of Late Antiquity societies throughout Eurasia, and triggered a major environmental event in the historical Roman Empire. Our set of stable carbon isotope records from subfossil tree rings demonstrates...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Nature Publishing Group UK
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5778132/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29358711 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-19760-w |
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author | Helama, Samuli Arppe, Laura Uusitalo, Joonas Holopainen, Jari Mäkelä, Hanna M. Mäkinen, Harri Mielikäinen, Kari Nöjd, Pekka Sutinen, Raimo Taavitsainen, Jussi-Pekka Timonen, Mauri Oinonen, Markku |
author_facet | Helama, Samuli Arppe, Laura Uusitalo, Joonas Holopainen, Jari Mäkelä, Hanna M. Mäkinen, Harri Mielikäinen, Kari Nöjd, Pekka Sutinen, Raimo Taavitsainen, Jussi-Pekka Timonen, Mauri Oinonen, Markku |
author_sort | Helama, Samuli |
collection | PubMed |
description | The large volcanic eruptions of AD 536 and 540 led to climate cooling and contributed to hardships of Late Antiquity societies throughout Eurasia, and triggered a major environmental event in the historical Roman Empire. Our set of stable carbon isotope records from subfossil tree rings demonstrates a strong negative excursion in AD 536 and 541–544. Modern data from these sites show that carbon isotope variations are driven by solar radiation. A model based on sixth century isotopes reconstruct an irradiance anomaly for AD 536 and 541–544 of nearly three standard deviations below the mean value based on modern data. This anomaly can be explained by a volcanic dust veil reducing solar radiation and thus primary production threatening food security over a multitude of years. We offer a hypothesis that persistently low irradiance contributed to remarkably simultaneous outbreaks of famine and Justinianic plague in the eastern Roman Empire with adverse effects on crop production and photosynthesis of the vitamin D in human skin and thus, collectively, human health. Our results provide a hitherto unstudied proxy for exploring the mechanisms of ‘volcanic summers’ to demonstrate the post-eruption deficiencies in sunlight and to explain the human consequences during such calamity years. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5778132 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-57781322018-01-31 Volcanic dust veils from sixth century tree-ring isotopes linked to reduced irradiance, primary production and human health Helama, Samuli Arppe, Laura Uusitalo, Joonas Holopainen, Jari Mäkelä, Hanna M. Mäkinen, Harri Mielikäinen, Kari Nöjd, Pekka Sutinen, Raimo Taavitsainen, Jussi-Pekka Timonen, Mauri Oinonen, Markku Sci Rep Article The large volcanic eruptions of AD 536 and 540 led to climate cooling and contributed to hardships of Late Antiquity societies throughout Eurasia, and triggered a major environmental event in the historical Roman Empire. Our set of stable carbon isotope records from subfossil tree rings demonstrates a strong negative excursion in AD 536 and 541–544. Modern data from these sites show that carbon isotope variations are driven by solar radiation. A model based on sixth century isotopes reconstruct an irradiance anomaly for AD 536 and 541–544 of nearly three standard deviations below the mean value based on modern data. This anomaly can be explained by a volcanic dust veil reducing solar radiation and thus primary production threatening food security over a multitude of years. We offer a hypothesis that persistently low irradiance contributed to remarkably simultaneous outbreaks of famine and Justinianic plague in the eastern Roman Empire with adverse effects on crop production and photosynthesis of the vitamin D in human skin and thus, collectively, human health. Our results provide a hitherto unstudied proxy for exploring the mechanisms of ‘volcanic summers’ to demonstrate the post-eruption deficiencies in sunlight and to explain the human consequences during such calamity years. Nature Publishing Group UK 2018-01-22 /pmc/articles/PMC5778132/ /pubmed/29358711 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-19760-w Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Article Helama, Samuli Arppe, Laura Uusitalo, Joonas Holopainen, Jari Mäkelä, Hanna M. Mäkinen, Harri Mielikäinen, Kari Nöjd, Pekka Sutinen, Raimo Taavitsainen, Jussi-Pekka Timonen, Mauri Oinonen, Markku Volcanic dust veils from sixth century tree-ring isotopes linked to reduced irradiance, primary production and human health |
title | Volcanic dust veils from sixth century tree-ring isotopes linked to reduced irradiance, primary production and human health |
title_full | Volcanic dust veils from sixth century tree-ring isotopes linked to reduced irradiance, primary production and human health |
title_fullStr | Volcanic dust veils from sixth century tree-ring isotopes linked to reduced irradiance, primary production and human health |
title_full_unstemmed | Volcanic dust veils from sixth century tree-ring isotopes linked to reduced irradiance, primary production and human health |
title_short | Volcanic dust veils from sixth century tree-ring isotopes linked to reduced irradiance, primary production and human health |
title_sort | volcanic dust veils from sixth century tree-ring isotopes linked to reduced irradiance, primary production and human health |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5778132/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29358711 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-19760-w |
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