Discovery Board
Mystery Not checked yet AD 1286

1286 eruption: a big sulfur signal that left the Moon bright

The thirteenth largest sulfur release of the last thousand years (15.1 million tonnes), found in both Greenland and Antarctica, which normally means a tropical eruption, and its Antarctic sulfur isotopes say it reached the stratosphere. Yet the total lunar eclipse of 22 October 1287 was bright and colourful, described by three independent writers in England and Italy, so there was no thick veil over the north by then. Tree rings show no northern cooling in the 1280s. Guillet et al. 2023 call it 'enigmatic' and suggest the eruption may have come in late 1285 or early 1286, early enough for the veil to have thinned by October 1287. The volcano is unknown.

Open questions worth our method: are there eclipse or dim-sun descriptions from 1285 to 1286 anywhere, especially in East Asia or the Islamic world?

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