Volcanic Eruption at Laacher See Being Revised to an Earlier Date

In a groundbreaking discovery, an interdisciplinary research team has set a precise date for the eruption of the Laacher See volcano, located in the Eifel region of western Germany, around 13,077 years ago. This research has significant consequences for the synchronization of European climate archives and the understanding of North Atlantic and European climate history.

The eruption column of the Laacher See volcano reached at least 20 kilometers in height, ejecting approximately 20 cubic kilometers of tephra. In the immediate vicinity of the volcano, mighty deposits of ash and pumice formed, burying all life beneath them. This cataclysmic event preserved charred remains of birch and poplar wood to this day.

An x-ray image of charred birch wood, recovered from the Laacher See Eruption deposits, shows the individual annual rings. This, along with subfossil pine discs found in Zurich, Switzerland, was used for radiocarbon calibration of trees found within the Laacher See deposits, leading to the precise eruption date.

Tree rings, as it turns out, are a valuable tool for climate historians. They allow conclusions to be drawn about growing conditions, providing indirect climatic insight. The analysis of tree rings from the charred remains revealed the precise date of the eruption, and the research further shed new light on the climate history of the entire North Atlantic region.

The massive cooling at the beginning of the Younger Dryas, the last Ice Age intermezzo, occurred in Central Europe 130 years earlier, around 12,870 years ago. This finding is significant as it revised the timeline of the Younger Dryas and its impact on the climate history of the region.

The research was conducted by the Climatology Group at the JGU Institute of Geography, led by Professor Ulf Büntgen at the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge, the Federal Research Institute for Forests, Snow and Landscape WSL in Switzerland, and the Ion Beam Physics Lab at ETH Zurich. The study was published in the journal Nature with the DOI 10.1038/s41586-021-03608-x.

The eruption of the Laacher See volcano affected large parts of Europe, with ash reaching as far as northern Italy in the south and Saint Petersburg in the northeast. The research findings were further discussed in press releases such as "European summer droughts since 2015 exceed anything in the past two millennia" (16 March 2021) and "Jan Esper receives ERC Advanced Grant to improve climate reconstructions from tree rings" (14 April 2020).

This research not only sets a precise date for the eruption of the Laacher See, but also sheds new light on the climate history of the North Atlantic region. The implications of this research are far-reaching and will undoubtedly contribute to a better understanding of our planet's climate history.