- 1Pôle de Recherche pour l'Organisation et la Diffusion de l'Information Géographique (PRODIG), Université Paris Cité, Paris, France
- 2Laboratoire de Géographie Physique (LGP), Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Thiais, France
- 3Climate Change Impacts and Risks in the Anthropocene (C-CIA), Institute for Environmental Sciences, University of Geneva, Genève, Suisse
- 4Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement (LSCE/IPSL), Gif-sur-Yvette, France
Explosive volcanic eruptions inject substantial quantities of sulfur gases into the atmosphere significantly influencing global temperatures and hydrological cycles. The formation of sulfate aerosols in the stratosphere following such eruptions can give rise to unusual optical phenomena, including solar dimming, red twilight glows, reddish solar halos, and dark total lunar eclipses. Recently, lunar eclipses have emerged as a valuable tool for reconstructing past stratospheric turbidity and refining the dating of major volcanic eruptions (Guillet et al., 2023).
This study presents a preliminary reconstruction of stratospheric aerosol optical depth (SAOD) from 1600 to 1850 CE, based on descriptions of 80 lunar eclipses documented in over 1,000 historical sources from across Europe. The reconstructed SAOD dataset was compared with bipolar ice core records (Sigl et al., 2015), model-derived aerosol optical depth (Toohey and Sigl, 2017), and climate reconstructions.
Our findings reveal that the darkest lunar eclipses of the past 400 years – occurring in 1601, 1642, 1696 and 1816 – correspond to the largest volcanic eruptions recorded in ice cores and align with significant cooling events in the Northern Hemisphere. This study highlights the potential of lunar eclipse observations to complement ice core data, providing additional, robust information to refine global stratospheric aerosol databases, which are essential for future climate modeling.
This contribution will also discuss plans to extend the dataset to the present day and address the inherent limitations and uncertainties associated with the methodology.
References:
Guillet, S., et al. (2023). Lunar eclipses illuminate timing and climate impact of medieval volcanism. Nature, 616, 90–95.
Sigl, M., et al. (2015). Timing and climate forcing of volcanic eruptions for the past 2,500 years. Nature, 523, 543–549.
Toohey, M., Sigl, M. (2017). Volcanic stratospheric sulfur injections and aerosol optical depth from 500 BCE to 1900 CE. Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 9, 809–831.
How to cite: Boissel, L., Guillet, S., Hureau, C., Lavigne, F., and Dahech, S.: Unveiling volcanic forcing through lunar eclipses: past, present and future perspectives, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-12721, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-12721, 2025.
