MYSTERIOUS ICELAND VOLCANO

       volcanologists have misplaced a volcanic eruption. They can’t find it – well, they can’t find the volcano that caused it – but they knew it took place in the early 1800s, and they can see its signature in the ice cores of both Greenland and Antarctica. Its ashy material spread across the entire planet, but somehow, no-one witnessed the eruption, and scientists can’t find the source of it.

This may strike you as odd. Enormous volcanic eruptions, particularly on a planet densely populated by humans, rarely go unnoticed. They may not always be documented as factual occurrences, but as legends – and even then, volcanologists use these epics as hints to find the real deal.

In this case, however, there isn’t a single written record of the eruption itself, despite the fact that the environmental fingerprint is indubitable.

Poking around in the two iciest regions of the planet, a team of scientists back in 2009 found a considerably sulphurous layer in the snow layers of 1809 and 1810. Its unique chemical signature indicated that it was generated by a volcanic blast that introduced debris up to 48 kilometers (roughly 30 miles) into the planet’s atmosphere.

When particularly explosive eruptions occur, they tend to release a decent amount of sulphur aerosols. There is no other natural process that releases sulphur compounds to the same degree and in such a short time period – and yet, after a thorough check through the scientific literature, no volcanic eruption had been recorded as happening on either of those years.

Apart from causing a bit of unpleasantly acidic rain, these aerosols also – in large enough quantities – transform into sulphuric acid droplets and clumps which block incoming solar radiation. Some eruptions, like that of Indonesia’s Tambora in 1815, effused such a vast amount of sulphurous particulate matter that Northern Hemisphere the following year was freakishly cold, leading it to be dubbed the “Year Without A Summer.”

 Although Tambora definitely contributed towards this chilling, scientists generally agree that this mysterious eruption was needed as well in order to sufficiently cool the planet

So an eruption definitely, indisputably took place – but where the heck is the original volcano?

In a 2014 paper analyzing the elusive event, researchers report that Colombian scientist Francisco José de Caldas – a polymath that lived around the time of the eruption – might give a hint as to where it could be.

You see, while he was serving as the Director of the Astronomical Observatory of Bogota between 1805 and 1810, he described a strange cloud that blocked the Sun at the end of 1808 and into early 1809. On its own this little tale might have been dismissed as a strange local phenomenon, but he wasn’t alone in his documentation.

Similar observations by Hipólito Unanue – another scientific talent based in Peru – were also made, ones that mentioned that the sunsets had a strange “afterglow” for some time during the winter of 1808. Scientists think that they were describing a sulphurous cloud that, by the process of elimination, had to have come from a tropical volcano – and one that erupted in the last week of November or the first week of December in 1808, not 1809, probably within the South Western Pacific Ocean.

But, to date, that volcano has never been found. Did it completely blow itself apart, or is it so remote that no human whatsoever laid their eyes on it? Was it observed by a local tribe? Everyone that was around back then has long since met their maker, so academics have to rely on science and serendipity alone.

This isn’t the first “missing” volcanic eruption in human history, but as it’s so recent, it’s extremely tantalizing that there is no record of it ever taking place.

So if you do have a hint as to where it might be, do drop us a line. Until then, we’ll have to put up with the ramblings of conspiracy theorists who no doubt blame it on aliens.

-G.B. RITHIKKA.