A University of Nottingham historian has helped scientists rewrite climate records by examining medieval manuscripts and other historical sources.
Dr Conor Kostick’s research into medieval evidence for climate events has allowed scientists to pinpoint the relationship between historical volcanic activity and severe winters.
The paper was published in the scientific journal, Nature, and has helped resolve a global debate about extreme climate events.
Climate science has made huge steps in recent years as data collection from natural sources such as tree-rings, ice cores and mineral cave formations has become more advanced.
Scientists now know that a major volcanic eruption can have significant cooling effects because its smoke plume injects sulphur particles into the atmosphere which reflects sunlight away from the planet.
Dr Conor Kostick said: “When Michael Sigl from the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada and his team learned of my work on extreme medieval climate events, they asked could I find ‘tie-points’ – years in which the historical sources suggest volcanic activity.
Thanks to my Nottingham Advanced Research Fellowship and my subsequent Marie Curie Fellowship I have been able to assemble a great deal of relevant evidence for unusual climate events in the medieval period.
Dr Conor Kostick from the University of Nottingham.
“I looked through my data and gave them a list of events, based not just upon obvious reports, such as eyewitness accounts of the eruption of Vesuvius in 472 CE, but also on more subtle evidence such as reports of the sun being dim, or discoloured.
“And the beauty of what happened next is that these examples formed a perfect match with the new ice-core data, even though I hadn’t seen their data and had no idea which years they were interested in.”
The resulting information will be very important to researchers working in the climate sciences, historians and archaeologists.
Dr Conor Kostick has now been awarded with a British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award for early career researchers.
