Signs of 'healing' ozone layer over Antarctic: study

Yahoo – AFP, June 30, 2016

A study has found that the September ozone hole over the Antarctic has shrunk
by 1.5 million square miles, signaling good news for the environment (AFP
Photo/Eitan Abramovich)

Miami (AFP) - The hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic has begun to shrink, signaling good news for the environment decades after an international accord to phase out certain pollutants, researchers said Thursday.

The study found that the ozone hole had shrunk by 1.5 million square miles (four million square kilometers) -- an area about the size of India -- since 2000.

"It's a big surprise," said lead author Susan Solomon, an atmospheric chemist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in an interview with Science magazine.

"I didn't think it would be this early."

The study attributed the ozone's recovery to the "continuing decline of atmospheric chlorine originating from chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)," or chemicals that were once emitted by dry cleaning, refrigerators, hairspray and other aerosols.

Most of the world signed on to the Montreal Protocol in 1987, which banned the use of CFCs.

"We can now be confident that the things we've done have put the planet on a path to heal," said Solomon.

Co-author Anja Schmidt, an academic research fellow in volcanic impacts at the University of Leeds, agreed, describing the Montreal Protocol as "a true success story that provided a solution to a global environmental issue."

Volcanic activity

The ozone hole was first discovered in the 1950s.

It reached record size in October 2015, but Solomon and colleagues determined that this was due to the eruption of the Chilean volcano Calbuco that same year.

The volcano slightly delayed the recovery of the ozone, which is sensitive to chlorine, temperature and sunlight.

"Volcanic injections of particles cause greater than usual ozone depletion," said Schmidt.

"Such eruptions are a sporadic source of tiny airborne particles that provide the necessary chemical conditions for the chlorine from CFCs introduced to the atmosphere to react efficiently with ozone in the atmosphere above Antarctica."

The ozone goes through a regular cycle each year, with depletion of ozone starting in late August at the end of Antarctica's dark winter.

The hole typically peaks in size in October.

The overall trend toward recovery became apparent when scientists studied measurements from satellites, ground-based instruments and weather balloons in the month of September, not October.

"I think people, myself included, had been too focused on October, because that's when the ozone hole is enormous," said Solomon.

"But October is also subject to the slings and arrows of other things that vary, like slight changes in meteorology."

Co-author Ryan Neely, a lecturer in observational atmospheric science at Leeds, said the scope of the study allowed the team to "quantify the separate impacts of man-made pollutants, changes in temperature and winds, and volcanoes, on the size and magnitude of the Antarctic ozone hole.

"Observations and computer models agree," he added.

"Healing of the Antarctic ozone has begun."

Related Article:

Ozone problem on course for fix by mid-century: UN

Earthquakes, volcanoes give Japan the jitters

Last Saturday's 8.1-magnitude earthquake was the fourth major seismic event to strike Japan in one week, suggesting that a period of relative stability in the tectonic plates beneath the country has come to an end.

Deutsche Welle, 1 June 2015

Passengers check train schedules after train services were suspended
following an earthquake at the Shinbashi station in Tokyo (Photo: Reuters/Kyodo)

From Hokkaido in the north of Japan to Kyushu at the other end of the archipelago, the shaking started at 8:23 pm on Saturday. It began as a slight shaking of the ground before quickly building up to more violent movements. For anyone who experienced the magnitude 8.1 earthquake, it seemed to last a lot longer than the three minutes that were recorded by the Japan Meteorological Agency's instruments.

The tremor was the sixth-largest to strike Japan in the last 100 years and instantaneously brought back images of the devastation caused the length of the coastline of north-east Japan in March 2011 by the Great East Japan Earthquake.

This time, however, Japan got off very lightly. Emergency services reported a dozen minor injuries, hundreds of elevators halted, and people had to walk down staircases to leave buildings, trains were halted until track inspections could be carried out, while similar checks were carried out at Narita and Haneda airports.

For many people, four significant seismic
 events in the space of one week is cause
for serious concern

No tsunami

With a focus 682 km below the surface, damage was negligible and the quake did not trigger a tsunami - but Japan is jittery because it struck the day after a volcano off the south coast erupted, and parts of the mountain town of Hakone are still off-limits due to volcanic activity. On May 25, an earthquake with a magnitude of 5.5 struck just north of Tokyo, shaking tall buildings in the city and disrupting train services.

For many people, four significant seismic events in the space of one week is cause for serious concern.

"After the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, the whole of the Japanese archipelago has been activated," Naoshi Hirata, a professor of earthquake science at The University of Tokyo, and an advisor to the government on the impact of major tremors, told DW.

"Immediately after the quake there was a lot of seismic activity, but that appeared to taper off," he said. "But we must remember that Japan is one of the most seismically active parts of the world, and we need to expect this degree of activity."

Experts admit that the sciences of both earthquakes and volcanoes are still imprecise, but the connections between the two are similarly poorly understood.

"The recent event could be partly connected," agreed Professor Hirata. "Immediately after March 2011, we saw increased seismic activity directly beneath the craters of several volcanoes. Fortunately, none of them erupted, but this does support the theory of a connection."

Warning levels raised

In recent months, the alert level for Mount Zao, on the borders of Yamagata and Miyagi prefectures in central Japan, has been raised and the meteorological agency is closely watching developments.

Infamously, Mount Ontake erupted without warning in September last year, killing 63 people. Authorities are about to resume the search for 12 people still listed as missing after their bodies were covered in as much as 1 meter of volcanic ash. The peak appears to have calmed down once again, but it remains off-limits to hikers.

The latest volcano to roar back into life is Mount Shindake, the peak that dominates the island of Kuchinoerabu, off southern Japan. The volcano experienced a minor eruption last year, but Friday's event was a Level 5 on Japan's five-grade scale and triggered the immediate evacuation of the 137 residents.

The plume of ash rose some nine km into the sky and lava flowed from the upper reaches of the 626-meter volcano, covering as much as 20 percent of the 36-square-kilometer island.

More than 400,000 buildings and
homes were destroyed by the
tsunami in 2011

Thirty residents of the island were permitted to return to their homes on Monday for a couple of hours, accompanied by police and emergency teams aboard a Coast Guard patrol vessel and helicopters. They ensured electrical appliances were unplugged to prevent accidental fires and fed livestock that had been left behind.

'No undue alarm'

Professor Shigeo Aramaki, an authority on volcanoes who has retired from The University of Tokyo but still advises the government on natural disasters, concurs on the need to be vigilant in areas close to the 100 volcanoes across the country, which are listed by the government as active, but says there is no need for undue alarm.

"The point is that the Japanese islands have been extraordinarily quiet for the last half-century or so, meaning this could very well simply be a return to a normal situation," he told DW. "I wouldn't say I have no concerns, but we can't be too concerned."

"The problem is that the science of volcanoes and earthquakes is still not well understood, so it is impossible at the moment to say whether these separate incidents are connected or if it is merely coincidence," he added.

Japan pushes ahead with plans to reopen nuclear reactors

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Japan pushes ahead with plans to reopen nuclear reactors

Japan prepares to mark three years since devastating quake

"Fast-Tracking" - Feb 8, 2014 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) - (Reference to Fukushima / H-bomb nuclear pollution and a warning about nuclear  (> 20 Min)

"A Summary" – Apr 2, 2011 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Religion, Shift of Human Consciousness, 2012, Intelligent/Benevolent Design, EU, South America, 5 Currencies, Water Cycle (Heat up, Mini Ice Ace, Oceans, Fish, Earthquakes ..), Middle East, Internet, Israel, Dictators, Palestine, US, Japan (Quake/Tsunami Disasters , People, Society ...), Nuclear Power Revealed, Hydro Power, Geothermal Power, Moon, Financial Institutes (Recession, Realign integrity values ..) , China, North Korea, Global Unity,..... etc.) - (Text version)

“... Japan

Let us talk for a moment about Japan, and then I'll close the day of messages. There are thousands of souls on my side of the veil and they're just fine, more than fine. We have spoken so often of what happens at the Wind of Birth. I told you, before they even came in, they saw the potential. I looked in their eyes. "You may not last long. You know that, don't you? You're coming into this planet and you may not be here very long. And the passing that you will have with your family will not be pleasant, if any ever are. Why would you come in anyway?" I want to tell you what they said. When a soul has the mind of God, it understands fully what generates peace and what generates energy shift. You can clearly see what generates what the planet needs the most when you are about to arrive. So they said, "We're going to be part of one of the biggest compassion events the planet has ever seen." One earthquake, one tsunami. All of those who left that day will change the earth forever. And it already has. It was the same for the last tsunami as well.

Every single one of them on my side of the veil is getting ready to come back. Many old souls were involved, and just for a moment, if they could give you any information, if they could talk to you right now, if they could speak your language and look into your eyes, they would thank you for your compassion for them and those who are left. And they would say, "Be with those family members who are still alive. Enter their hearts every day and give them peace and keep them from crying, because we're OK."

Nuclear Power Revealed

So let me tell you what else they did. They just showed you what's wrong with nuclear power. "Safe to the maximum," they said. "Our devices are strong and cannot fail." But they did. They are no match for Gaia.

It seems that for more than 20 years, every single time we sit in the chair and speak of electric power, we tell you that hundreds of thousands of tons of push/pull energy on a regular schedule is available to you. It is moon-driven, forever. It can make all of the electricity for all of the cities on your planet, no matter how much you use. There's no environmental impact at all. Use the power of the tides, the oceans, the waves in clever ways. Use them in a bigger way than any designer has ever put together yet, to power your cities. The largest cities on your planet are on the coasts, and that's where the power source is. Hydro is the answer. It's not dangerous. You've ignored it because it seems harder to engineer and it's not in a controlled environment. Yet, you've chosen to build one of the most complex and dangerous steam engines on Earth - nuclear power.

We also have indicated that all you have to do is dig down deep enough and the planet will give you heat. It's right below the surface, not too far away all the time. You'll have a Gaia steam engine that way, too. There's no danger at all and you don't have to dig that far. All you have to do is heat fluid, and there are some fluids that boil far faster than water. So we say it again and again. Maybe this will show you what's wrong with what you've been doing, and this will turn the attitudes of your science to create something so beautiful and so powerful for your grandchildren. Why do you think you were given the moon? Now you know.

This benevolent Universe gave you an astral body that allows the waters in your ocean to push and pull and push on the most regular schedule of anything you know of. Yet there you sit enjoying just looking at it instead of using it. It could be enormous, free energy forever, ready to be converted when you design the methods of capturing it. It's time.

So in closing, do you understand what you're seeing? You're seeing intelligent design, quantum energy and high consciousness. You are seeing changes in Human nature. You're seeing countries putting things together instead of separating. You are seeing those who don't want war and instead want peace, good schools for their children, safety in their streets and a say in their government. We told you it was going to happen this way. I want my partner to teach these things that I have said in his 3D lectures for awhile. Many won't be able to know these things otherwise.  …”

Rwanda's deadly methane lake becomes source of future power

Yahoo – AFP, Stephanie Aglietti, 25 May 2014

A man looks towards the hills of Rwanda on the eastern edge of Lake Kivu from

 the Democratic Republic of the Congo's eastern city of Goma on May 28, 2012

(AFP Photo/Phil Moore)

Karongi (Rwanda) (AFP) - Beneath the calm waters of Lake Kivu lie vast but deadly reserves of methane and carbon dioxide, which Rwanda is tapping both to save lives and provide a lucrative power source.

Plans are in place to pump out enough gas for power that would nearly double Rwanda's current electricity capacity, as well as reducing the chance of what experts warn could be a potentially "catastrophic" natural disaster.

The glittering waters of the inland sea, which straddles the border of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, contain a dangerous and potent mix of the dissolved gases that if disturbed would create a rare "limnic eruption" or "lake overturn", expert Matthew Yalire said.

Levels of carbon dioxide (Co2) and methane are large and dangerous enough to risk a sudden release that could cause a disastrous explosion, after which waves of Co2 would suffocate people and livestock around, explained Yalire, a researcher at the Goma Volcano Observatory, on the lake's DR Congo shore.

A man fishes on the edge of Lake Kivu on

 May 28, 2012 near the city of Goma in

 North Kivu province in the Democratic

Republic of the Congo (AFP Photo/Phil

Moore)

"Right now the lake is stable, but for how long?" asked Yalire, who believes that extracting potentially explosive methane is one way to help "stabilise" the lake.

Near the town of Rubavu, a pilot project of the Rwandan government is already producing about two megawatts of electricity from the methane in the lake.

But a new, additional plant is being built on Kivu's eastern shore, where the US-based power company ContourGlobal plans massively to boost production.

"Our team is focused on extracting methane from the lake to generate electricity that will expand household access to power, lower costs, and reduce environmental hazards," ContourGlobal said.

Its 200 million dollar (145 million euro) "KivuWatt" project aims to lessen the natural threat of an explosion, while turning the deadly gas into a source of energy and profit.

Two million people at risk

On the lake's Rwandan shoreline and at the foot of green hills dotted with banana plantations, hundreds of construction workers are building a platform due to be installed on the lake by the end of the year.

Rather than being a drill platform, it will instead suck up the methane trapped in the depths.

"There is no drilling, gas is pumped from the lower layers of the lake that are saturated with methane," the KivuWatt project's chief, Yann Beutler, told AFP.

"From the moment when the water rises to the surface, it releases gases that are collected."

The methane and Co2 are separated, with the methane sent to a plant on the shore and the Co2 re-dissolved and returned to the depths of the lake.

"The structure of the lake, and the flora and fauna, are not changed," Beutler added.

The project's first phase is planned to generate over 25 megawatts of energy, with production to be multiplied four times in the second phase to 100 MW, almost doubling Rwanda's current national production capacity of about 115 MW.

The scheme is largely financed by private capital, though some 45 percent of the funding takes the shape of loans from international development institutions.

ContourGlobal has signed a 25-year concession with the Rwandan government and an agreement with the country's national power producer and distributor.

Lessons from Cameroon

The electrification of Rwanda is a top objective of Kigali's government, which aims to more than triple access to electricity from a mere 18 percent of the population today to 70 percent by 2017.

The methane will also help Rwanda fulfil the further goal of diversifying energy sources.

Today, almost half of its energy comes from fossil fuels, with the annual bill for imported fuel topping some 40 million dollars (30 million euros).

Kivu is not unique: two other lakes in Cameroon -- Monoun and Nyos -- have similar high concentrations of the gases. In 1984, a limnic eruption killed 37 people around Lake Monoun, then in 1986 a similar disaster at Lake Nyos claimed more than 1,700 lives. These tragedies have been seen as dire warnings for people near Lake Kivu.

A view from a UN base on the edge of Lake Kivu in the Democratic Republic

 of the Congo's eastern city of Goma on May 28, 2012 shows the hills of Rwanda

in the background (AFP Photo/Phil Moore)

"It is essential to extract the gas from the lake," said Martin Schmid, a researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag).

"If we let the gases accumulate for a long time, we should expect at a catastrophic eruption of gas."

Stretching over 2,370 kilometres squared (915 miles squared) and plunging to some 485 metres (1,590 feet) deep, the lake holds some 60 billion cubic metres (2,118 billion cubic feet) of dissolved methane gas, and some 300 billion cubic metres (10,594 billion cubic feet) of carbon dioxide.

With some two million people living close to the lake shore in both Rwanda and DR Congo, any eruption could be disastrous.

An active nearby volcano, Mount Nyiragongo, which smothered part of the Kivu lakeshore city of Goma with lava in 2002, highlights the real risk that geological activity in the lake could trigger an explosion.

Both the lake and volcano are located on Africa's continental Rift zone, where the Earth's tectonic plates are very slowly being pulled apart.

Related Articles:

BP spill: Sea methane persisted after microbe cleanup

"Fast-Tracking" - Feb 8, 2014 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) - (Reference to Fukushima / H-bomb nuclear pollution, Oil Spills...  )  (> 20 Min)

Schoolchildren among 14 killed by Indonesia volcano eruption

Google – AFP, 1 February 2014

A resident runs away to escape from hot volcanic ash clouds engulfing

 villages in Karo district during the eruption of Mount Sinabung volcano, on

Indonesia's Sumatra island, on February 1, 2014 (AFP, Sutanta Aditya)

Karo — Fourteen people, including four schoolchildren, were killed Saturday after they were engulfed in scorching ash clouds spat out by Indonesia's Mount Sinabung in its biggest eruption in recent days, officials said.

Dark, searing clouds rolling down the mountain left apocalyptic scenes of ash-covered bodies scattered by a roadside in Sukameriah village, just 2.7 kilometres (1.7 miles) from the volcano's crater, an AFP witness who helped with the evacuation said.

Officials fear there could be more fatalities from Saturday's eruptions, but due to the high potential of lethal heat clouds spewing from the mountain, a search and rescue mission has been grounded, officials said.

Indonesian rescuers recover the body of a 

victim at a village in Karo district following

 eruptions of Mount Sinabung, on Sumatra

island, on February 1, 2014 (AFP, Sutanta

Aditya)

"We suspect there are more victims but we cannot recover them because the victims are in the path of the hot (ash) clouds," said Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, the spokesman for the National Disaster Management Agency.

All 14 bodies have been identified. Four of them were high school students on a sightseeing trip to the volcano on the western island of Sumatra, he added.

"The bodies were in a state where, even though their skin did not peel, their faces were swollen and the tongues were sticking out," an AFP reporter on the ground said.

Three other people -- a father and his son who wanted to pay respects at the graves of their relatives, and a man who came to the village to check his long-abandoned house -- were also trapped and injured by the deadly clouds, Karo district official Johnson Tarigan told AFP.

He said the three were in the intensive care unit of a local hospital.

Thirty thousand people have been evacuated from the area since the volcano started erupting in September.

But some residents had returned home on Friday following advice from the Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation that houses outside the five-kilometre radius from the mountain were safe.

The volcano erupted again on Saturday morning, sending hot rocks and ash up 2,000 metres (16,00 feet) into the air, blanketing the surrounding countryside with grey dust, said volcanologist Kristianto, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.

A giant cloud of hot volcanic ash clouds engulfs villages in Karo district

 during the eruption of Mount Sinabung volcano, on Indonesia's

Sumatra island, on February 1, 2014 (AFP, Sutanta Aditya)

Sukameriah village is located in the red zone, where human activities are strictly banned, but locals often trespassed the restricted area to check on their houses and belongings as well as their crops, officials said.

Nugroho said the evacuation will resume on Sunday.

Mount Sinabung is one of 129 active volcanoes in Indonesia that straddle major tectonic fault lines, known as the Pacific Ring of Fire.

It had been quiet for around 400 years until it rumbled back to life in 2010, and again in September last year.

In August 2013, five people were killed and hundreds evacuated when a volcano on a small island in East Nusa Tenggara province erupted.

The country's most active volcano, Mount Merapi in central Java, killed more than 350 people in a series of eruptions in 2010.

Related Article:

“2011 and Beyond” - What you are seeing, and why - Jan 16, 2010 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Text version)

New Mini Ice Age

“… So now we've refreshed that which we have said before, a review. You are in the middle of a cycle that will bring cooling to the planet. It is not a heat cycle, but rather a cooling cycle. But it always starts with a short heat cycle. It has been here before. It will come again. It is a long cycle - one generation plus five years. That's how long it's going to last. It starts with the melting of the ice caps, which is far more than any of you have seen in your lifetime or those of your ancestors. It is a cycle whose repetition is thousands of years long, but one that has not yet been recorded to the books of Human record. But it's definitely been recorded in the cores of the ice and in the rings of the trees.

Thousands of years old, it is, and it happens in a cyclical way. It's about water. It starts with that which is the melting of the ice caps to a particular degree, which has a profound effect on the planet in all ways. You can't have that happen without seeing life change as well as Gaia change and you've seeing it already. What happens when you take that which is heavy on the poles [ice] and you melt it? It then becomes cold water added to that which is a very, very gentle and finite balance of temperature in the seas of the planet (1). The first thing that happens is a redistribution of the weight of water on the thin crust of the earth from ice at the poles to new water in the seas. The results become earthquakes and volcanoes, and you're seeing them, aren't you? You are having earthquakes in places that are not supposed to have earthquakes. Volcanoes are coming to life in a way that you've not seen before on a regular basis. There will be more. Expect them.

Is it too much to ask of a Human Being that if you live by a volcano that you know might erupt, maybe you ought to move? Yet there will be those who say, "It hasn't erupted in my lifetime or my parents' lifetime or my grandparents' lifetime; therefore, it won't." You may have a surprise, for all things are changing. That is what is happening to Gaia. ….“

THE RELATIONSHIP TO GAIA - April 2010 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll)

"The weather you have today, and all the alarming attributes of it, is a scenario of what was scheduled to happen on Earth anyway. I review again that the weather changes you are seeing prophesied by myself, 21 years ago, are not a surprise. The changes are not caused by the pollutants you put in the air. You call it global warming and that's a nice phrase, and perhaps that will get you to put less pollutants in the air – a very good thing. But what you are seeing in the weather shift today was not caused by Humans putting things into the air. It would have happened anyway in about 300 years."

"We've called this process the water cycle, since it's all about water, not about air. The water is the predominant attribute of Gaia and of the weather cycle you're seeing. More predominant is the temperature of it. The cycle is ice to water and water to ice, and has been repeated on this planet over and over and over. It is not new. It is not exceptional. It is not frightening. But it's a cycle that modern humanity has not seen before, and it's a long cycle that is beyond the life span of a Human Being. Therefore, it tends to be overlooked or not seen at all !"

"In the days of the Lemurians, the water level of the Pacific Ocean was almost 400 feet lower, and that's only 50,000 years ago. [Kryon invites science to check this out – the water level at that time.] That was a water cycle working, and the reason it was lower was due to so much of the water being stored as ice. Today you're going through another water cycle that will eventually lead to cooling. The last one was in the 1400s."

"Science sees that at about 1650. As mentioned, they are so slow there is no remembrance that a Human has of them except in past writings and in the rings of the trees. The time span of the changes is so great that environmental record keeping does not exist in the form that it does today. But you can still look at the rings of the trees and at the striations of the rocks and can generally figure out that a few hundred years ago, you had a mini-ice age. Now you're going to have another one." 

Mystery 13th Century eruption traced to Lombok, Indonesia

BBC News, Jonathan Amos, Science correspondent, 30 Sep 2013

Related Stories

• 'World's largest volcano' discovered
• Volcanic 'scream' precedes eruption
• Volcano catastrophe idea 'dismissed'

The bowl that is today Segara Anak
Crater Lake formed after the eruption

Scientists think they have found the volcano responsible for a huge eruption that occurred in the 13th Century.

The mystery event in 1257 was so large its chemical signature is recorded in the ice of both the Arctic and the Antarctic.

European medieval texts talk of a sudden cooling of the climate, and of failed harvests.

In the PNASjournal, an international team points the finger at the Samalas Volcano on Lombok Island, Indonesia.

Little remains of the original mountain structure - just a huge crater lake.

The team has tied sulphur and dust traces in the polar ice to a swathe of data gathered in the Lombok region itself, including radiocarbon dates, the type and spread of ejected rock and ash, tree-rings, and even local chronicles that recall the fall of the Lombok Kingdom sometime in the 13th Century.

"The evidence is very strong and compelling," Prof Clive Oppenheimer, from Cambridge University, UK, told the BBC.

Co-worker Prof Franck Lavigne, from the Pantheon-Sorbonne University, France, added: "We conducted something similar to a criminal investigation.

"We didn't know the culprit at first, but we had the time of the murder and the fingerprints in the form of the geochemistry in the ice cores, and that allowed us to track down the volcano responsible."

The 1257 eruption has been variously linked with volcanoes in Mexico, Ecuador and New Zealand.

But these candidates fail on their dating or geochemistry, the researchers say. Only Samalas can "tick all the boxes".

Global event

The team's studies on Lombok indicate that as much 40 cubic kilometres (10 cubic miles) of rock and ash could have been hurled from the volcano, and that the finest material in the eruption plume would likely have climbed 40km (25 miles) or more into the sky.

It would have had to be this big in order for material to be carried across the entire globe in the quantities seen in the Greenland and Antarctic ice layers.

The impact on the climate would have been significant.

What are the four ways volcanoes
can kill?

Medieval texts describe atrocious weather the following summer in 1258. It was cold, and the rain was unrelenting, leading to flooding.

Archaeologists recently put a date of 1258 on the skeletons of thousands of people who were buried in mass graves in London.

"We cannot say for sure these two events are linked but the populations would definitely have been stressed," Prof Lavigne told BBC News.

In comparison with recent catastrophic blasts, Samalas was at least as big as Krakatoa (1883) and Tambora (1815), the researchers believe.

The ice cores do hold clues to yet another colossal event in about 1809, but, like Samalas before it, finding the source volcano has been difficult.

Prof Oppenheimer said: "It's outstanding that we haven't come across evidence for it. Where in the world could you bury such bad news?"

Iceland's volcanoes may power UK

The energy minister is to visit Iceland in May to discuss connecting the UK to its abundant geothermal energy

guardian.co.uk, Damian Carrington, Wednesday 11 April 2012

Iceland could soon be pumping low-carbon electricity into the UK under
 government-backed plans for thousands of miles of high-voltage cables across
the ocean floor. Photograph: Alamy

The volcanoes of Iceland could soon be pumping low-carbon electricity into the UK under government-backed plans for thousands of miles of high-voltage cables across the ocean floor.

The energy minister, Charles Hendry, is to visit Iceland in May to discuss connecting the UK to its abundant geothermal energy. "We are in active discussions with the Icelandic government and they are very keen," Hendry told the Guardian. To reach Iceland, which sits over a mid-ocean split in the earth's crust, the cable would have to be 1,000 to 1,500km long and by far the longest in the world.

Hendry has already met the head of Iceland's national grid about the plan. The web of sea-floor cables – called interconnectors – planned for the next decade would link the UK to a Europe-wide supergrid, which is backed by the prime minister. The supergrid would combine the wind and wave power of northern Europe with solar projects such as Desertec in southern Europe and north Africa to deliver reliable, clean energy to meet climate change targets and reduce dependence on fossil fuel imports.

There are two existing international interconnectors, to France and the Netherlands, but nine more are either in construction, formal planning or undergoing feasibility studies. The next to open, in autumn 2012, will be a link between the Republic of Ireland and Wales, allowing green energy from the windswept Atlantic coast of Ireland to be delivered to British homes.

The UK has been energy independent for virtually its entire history. But with the North Sea's oil and gas failing and coal banned as too polluting, Hendry is frank about the future: "We will be dependent on imported energy." The cables "are an absolutely critical part of energy security and for low carbon energy", he said.

The government's legally binding targets to reduce carbon emissions is another key driver for the new interconnectors, which if all built could supply a third of the nation's average electricity demand. Renewable energy, such as the offshore wind power at the heart of the government's renewable plans, is zero carbon once built but is also intermittent, meaning back-up gas plants or energy storage are needed. A 900km interconnector to Norway, due to open by 2019, would enable excess wind energy to pump water into storage lakes above the fjords. Then, when the electricity is needed, floodgates are opened and the water flows back down through turbines. Both the pump storage and the high-voltage direct-current interconnectors lose very little energy.

Another ambitious interconnector would link England to Alderney, where very strong tides could produce 4GW of electricity, and then on to France and the new 1.6GW nuclear power plant being built at Flamanville. Commercial agreements for this were signed in February.

Interconnector cables can be laid very rapidly – at over 30km a day – but remain significant engineering projects, with each kilometre containing 800 tonnes of copper. The most time-consuming aspect is settling international agreements and preparing landing sites and pylons to handle and distribute a large amount of electricity. "It's like taking a large nuclear power station onshore," said Hendry.

He argued that a web of high-voltage cables ending the energy isolation of the British Isles will help keep household energy bills down, by allowing access to the cheapest energy at any particular time.

Tony Glover, at energy grid trade body the Energy Networks Association, said: "For consumers the ability to link electricity supplies from the rest of Europe is good for competition and will generally help to keep prices competitive." The interconnectors can be built commercially with operators paying for the investment by taking a cut on the electricity transferred.

As well as consumer energy bills, Hendry also argued that interconnectors will help reduce the cost of the intermittency of renewable energy. "Interconnectors are an incredibly effective way to counter the argument that you need to back up each gigawatt of wind with a gigawatt of gas – they quite clearly show you do not," he said.

Interconnectors require large investments. The Britain-Netherland interconnector, which opened in 2011 and was the first international link in 25 years, cost £500m. But Greenpeace's Doug Parr said: "Interconnectors are the cheapest way of backing up wind, because you avoid the greater capital cost of building power stations. We will of course be buying power in when the wind is not blowing, but the interconnectors mean we can sell our wind power when it does, and we have the best wind resource in Europe."

However, Simon Less at the thinktank Policy Exchange, urged caution in relying on interconnectors for back-up: "Major new interconnection in north western Europe might not offset much of the need for backup plant because winter high pressure weather patterns can extend low wind conditions right across Europe."

Norway's pump storage could counter that fear but there is competition for access to that resource, with Germany also negotiating over an interconnector. "We are keen we should be first," said Hendry.

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