Fiery volcanoes and the frigid polar regions seem poles apart. But concealed in the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets are mementos—ash and sulfate particles—from past super-powerful volcanic eruptions. During such eruptions, volcanoes spew material dozens of miles into the sky. The swirling of winds disperses these chemicals and ash over continents, all the way to the poles. When snow falls there, the material is also deposited. In ice cores—cylinders of ice drilled from ice sheets—sulfate from past volcanic plumes shows up as spikes. Measuring how intense each spike is helps scientists figure out how strong each eruption was.
In the 1970s, polar scientists stumbled upon a sulfate spike that occurred in roughly 1259. Unlike others, though, this one was. It dwarfed the spike from the ear-splitting 1883 eruption ofa scientist who studies volcanoes. She also lectures about geography at the University of Cambridge in England. “The amount of material erupted would have buried New York City under about eight feet (2.5 m) of rocks and ash.”
