Hunch Looked, found nothing AD 1452

Pinatubo's Buag eruption made the 1453 sulfate signal

Checked 25 October 2026. In the Smithsonian list, Pinatubo's Buag eruption (VEI 5, about 1450 +/- 50) is the only large northern tropical eruption whose date fits; recalibrating its five radiocarbon ages with IntCal20 gives 1438 to 1454 (68 percent), and it was about the size of 1991, which matches the ice. No paper we found has proposed it.

But the sulfur isotopes (Burke et al. 2023) show the first 1453 sulfate reached Greenland below the ozone layer, so the main volcano was outside the tropics, near or upwind of Greenland. A Philippine eruption cannot do that. So Pinatubo is not the main source.

One loophole, a long shot: the small Antarctic sulfate peak in 1453 is hard to explain with a purely northern eruption, and in 1600 Burke's team found two eruptions at once (one northern extratropical, plus Huaynaputina in the tropics). If 1452/53 was also a double event, Pinatubo could be the tropical partner. Test: look for Pinatubo-type dacite glass, or a stratospheric sulfur-isotope signal, in the small 1453 peak in Antarctic ice.

How it connects

This hunch is about The mystery eruption of 1452/53 and the omens at the fall of Constantinople

This hunch we read it in Burke et al. 2023, High sensitivity of summer temperatures to stratospheric sulfur loading from volcanoes in the Northern Hemisphere, PNAS 120 (sulfur isotopes across the 536, 1453, 1458 and 1600 eruptions)

This hunch we read it in Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program, Volcanoes of the World, Holocene eruptions list (web service download)

This hunch we read it in Newhall et al. 1996, Eruptive history of Mount Pinatubo, in Fire and Mud (USGS/PHIVOLCS), with Table 1 radiocarbon data for the Buag eruptive period

This hunch is supported by Pinatubo's Buag eruption, recalibrated: AD 1438 to 1454 (68%), 1426 to 1469 (95%) the date and size fit

This hunch is argued against by Sulfur isotopes: the 1453 volcano was outside the tropics, near or upwind of Greenland first sulfate came below the ozone layer: not a tropical volcano

This hunch came from this step Searched for the 1453 volcano: Pinatubo fits the date, the sulfur says no