Volcanic winter of 536

In the years 535 and 536, several remarkable aberrations in world climate took place. The Byzantine historian Procopius recorded of 536, "during this year a most dread portent took place. For the sun gave forth its light without brightness… and it seemed exceedingly like the sun in eclipse, for the beams it shed were not clear.". Tree ring analysis by dendrochronologist Mike Baillie, Queen's University, Belfast, shows abnormally little growth in Irish oak in 536 and another sharp drop in 542, after a partial recovery. Similar patterns are recorded in tree rings from Sweden and Finland, in California's Sierra Nevada and in rings from Chilean Alerce trees.

Further phenomena reported by a number of independent contemporary sources:

low temperatures, even snow during the summer
dark clouds, only a few hours of sunlight during the day
floods in formerly dry regions
crop failures

It has been conjectured that these changes were due to ashes or dust thrown into the air after the impact of a comet or meteorite, or after the eruption of a volcano (a phenomenon known as "volcanic winter").

A similar, lesser episode of climatic aberration was also observed in 1816, popularly known as the Year Without A Summer, which has been connected to the explosion of the volcano Tambora in Sumbawa, Indonesia.

In a 1999 book, David Keys, supported by work of the American volcanologist Ken Wohletz, suggested that the Indonesian volcano Krakatoa exploded at the time and caused the changes (it is suggested that an eruption of Krakatoa attributed to the year 416 by the Javanese Book of Kings actually took place at this time - there is no other evidence of such an eruption in 416). He further speculated that the climate changes may have contributed to various developments, such as the emergence of bubonic plague (the Plague of Justinian), the migration of Mongolian tribes towards the West, the end of the Persian empire, the rise of Islam and the end of various civilizations in Central and South America. PBS based a documentary, Catastrophe!, on Keys and Wohletz' ideas. These ideas are not widely accepted at this point.

The 536 event and ensuing famine has been suggested as an explanation for the fact that Scandinavian elites sacrificed large amounts of gold at the end of the Migration Period, possibly to appease the angry gods and get the sunlight back.

Stephen Baxter apparently makes a brief allusion to this event in his novel Evolution, in which he mentions that a fictional eruption of Rabaul was "the biggest eruption since the sixth century after Christ".

David Keys: Catastrophe: A Quest for the Origins of the Modern World, Ballantine Books, New York, 1999
Ken Wohletz: Were the Dark Ages Triggered by Volcano-Related Climate Changes in the 6th Century?
Joel D. Gunn (ed.): The Years without Summer: Tracing A.D. 536 and its Aftermath. ISBN 1841710741
Morten Axboe: Amulet Pendants and a Darkened Sun. Bente Magnus (ed.), Roman Gold and the Development of the Early Germanic Kingdoms. Stockholm 2001. ISBN 91-7402-310-1
Simon Winchester: Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded, August 27, 1883. ISBN 0066212855, 2003
M G L Baillie: Slice Through Time. ISBN 0713476540, 1995. (Google Print, p. 93)
Mike Baillie: Exodus to Arthur: Catastrophic Encounters With Comets, 1999 [1]
David Levy (editor): The Scientific American Book of the Cosmos. ISBN 0312254539, 2000. (Google Print, p. 186)

Further Reading