A drastic change in glacial dynamics at the beginning of the seventeenth century on Novaya Zemlya coincides in time with the strongest volcanic eruption in Peru and the Great Famine in Russia

Abstract

AbstractIn this study, we reconstructed for the first time the recent 1000-yr-long history of Goluboi tidewater glacier at the eastern side of the Novaya Zemlya, Kara Sea, based on accelerator mass spectrometry 14C dating with higher-resolution age control on the basis of 210Pb and 137Cs radionuclides for the time period after AD 1885, using multiproxy analyses (lithology, mineralogy, and geochemistry) of proximal glaciomarine sediments from the Oga Fjord. Against the background of the active glacial dynamics and the intense meltwater runoff until the end of the sixteenth century, there was a sudden cooling at the beginning of the seventeenth century, which manifested itself in a significant decrease in the sedimentation rates. In time, this event coincides with the strongest volcanic eruption, AD 1600, in South America (in Peru) in the history of human settlement of the continent, which may have plunged the globe into cold climate chaos (Witze, 2008), and caused the Great Famine, AD 1601 to AD 1603, in Russia. The synchronicity of the described events may be an additional fact confirming the global impact of the eruption on the climate of our planet.