Deep Tusk Talk

New Light on the Black Death
Bonus video to lighten it up

This post is for total nerds. So stop here if you have a social life.

Below I’ve excerpted a lengthy debate in the comment section of the Tusk concerning the timing and cause of global shocks since the Younger Dryas, in particular the eventful downturns of the last 2022 years.

Tusk buddy Jonny McAneny kicked it off in the comment section by calling into question support for a cosmic event at 1014 AD, the subject of my recent re-post concerning a possible Atlantic cosmic tsunami at that time. I welcomed Jonny’s informed skepticism.

But then, out of nowhere, an equally informed reader Stuart Hamish jumps in and goes toe-to-toe with Jonny on the matter, and broadens the subject to include the horrible period of the 530s AD. The exchange is chockablock full of all sorts of obscure citations and ancient references. Some of you will enjoy it I think.

But, like I say, the debate is not for the data hesitant…

1. I have posted about this before on this blog, but for any new readers here is a brief summary. That graphic linking ammonium to the AD 1014 Michaelmas sea flood needs to be put to bed. Put simply, the ice cores can no longer be used as evidence to support a cosmic impact or cosmogenic tsunami in AD 1014.

   We now know that the ice core dating used in the above graphic is incorrect, and that the ammonium signal at “1014” in the GRIP ice cores, is around AD 1020/21 (and the AD 539 signal is actually dated to AD 546/7). The suggestion of cosmogenic link was first made by Mike Baillie around 2007 (in his book A New Light on the Black Death as well as in the paper.  The case for significant numbers of extraterrestrial impacts through the late Holocene JOURNAL OF QUATERNARY SCIENCE (2007) 22(2) 101–109).

   The logic at the time was that there was a large climatic event that effected most of the Northern Hemisphere in the years 540-545, but there was no evidence of a large volcanic eruption in ice cores around 540, and so a cosmic impact was proposed to explain the climate event. There was however an ammonium signal in the ice cores dated (at the time) to 539, and one ice core (GISP2) had a large ammonium anomaly dated to AD 1908, which of course was the year of the Tunguska event. So, at the time these ice core ammonium signals were posited to be of impact origin.

   Mike had suggested in the above papers that 1014 may be an impact year because there was a report of a close comet, as well as a sea flood, and the ammonium signal. However, now that we know that the ammonium signals are not actually at 1014 (or 539), but 6 to 7 years later it weakens the argument for a cosmogenic tsunami (or indeed a cosmic impact) in 1014.

   The thing is, the historic accounts of the Michaelmas flood suggest that it primarily effected the North sea coast of England and also the Netherlands, but there are hints that it effected parts of the south coast of England too. Given that it was close to New Moon on the date of the flood (and hence Spring Tide), it is possible that a North sea storm, in combination with a High Spring Tide, may have caused the flooding, similar to the events of the North Sea Flood on 31st January 1953. Now there are some historical accounts of the flood effecting Cumbria, whose coast is on the Irish sea, and it may be that this could be storm driven, or it is possible that the historical account may be confused with a second sea flood account earlier that year (23 April 1014) when a sea flood around Dublin helped the Irish King Brian Boru defeat the Vikings.

   The point is, when we remove the ammonium signal from the argument (which was originally the primary reason at the time that Mike Baillie questioned if an impact had occurred in 1014), it weakens the evidence for a cosmogenic impact in that particular year, and so we must look for more mundane causes for the Michaelmas flood.

   We can ask two philosophical questions.

   1) If the ice cores were correctly dated in the first place, would the suggestion of an cosmogenic tsunami in AD 1014 be suggested based on physical evidence at the time?

   2) What are the chances that erroneous ice core data, and Mike’s original logic and argument chain suggesting a possible cosmic impact in AD 1014, would actually lead researchers to find that an impact did actually occur in 1014? It seems improbable (though not impossible).

   Even if Abbott et al. do have evidence of an impact, and this evidence coincides with evidence for an Atlantic tsunami, their dates are imprecise (AD 1006 +/- 67, or between 939-1073), and so we could just have a case of “suck in and smear”. That is, because we have a date of 1014 for a sea flood (indeed two different sea floods that year), and because the dating of one of the tsunami sediment layers brackets that date (the smear of a date), it MUST be THAT date (the evidence is sucked into that date).

   The evidence may indicate the occurrence of an Atlantic tsunami, but did it occur in 1014? Possibly. Was it cosmogenic? I don’t think the ice cores can now support that conclusion.

2. Ronald,

   A recent study on axe marks on tree stumps at the L’Anse aux Meadows site have been dated to precisely AD 1021. This was achieved by looking for the AD 993 so-called Miyake event (a radiocarbon excess signal observed in tree ring chronologies around the world, as well as being observed in ice cores as over-abundance of cosmogenic Beryllium 10), and once finding that signal counting the tree rings out to the bark. The conclusion was that the axe marks must have been made in the year of AD 1021 (or perhaps a year after)

   This means that the site was occupied after AD 1014, though we still do not know precisely when the site was first occupied or when it was abandoned.

5. Jonny McAneney : ” That graphic linking ammonium to the AD 1014 AD Michaelmass sea flood needs to be put to bed……the ice cores can no longer be used as evidence to support a cosmic impact or cosmogenic tsunami in AD 1014 ”

   ” We now know that the ice core dating used in the above graphic is incorrect ”

   “Mike had suggested ….that 1014 may be an impact year because there was a report of a close comet as well as a sea flood and the ammonium signal .However now that we know that the ammonium signals are not actually at 1014 [ or 539 ] but 6 to 7 years later it weakens the argument for a cosmogenic tsunami [ or indeed a cosmic impact ] in 1014 ”

   I submit that Jonny has either misinterpreted Baillie’s arguments or – as I suspect – he is trying to bluff us with a pea and thimble trick . Baillie specifically discusses the 6-7 year dating uncertainty in the ice core records as it pertains to the GISP2 core that is compromised by lost sections of ice – not , in his words , the “well replicated GRIP record ” displayed above . On page 165 of his book New Light on the Black Death ” Baillie writes : ” it might be more accurate to say that by 1014 the GISP2 core has lost about six annual layers and the record is about six years too short . This implies very strongly that the American ice core workers were already losing years from their counts of annual layers by the early eleventh century ”. He then cites the dating anchor that is the “major sulphate spike at 938 in the GISP2 core ,a spike which is dated to 932 in Dye 3 and to 934 in GRIP ….the sulphate record also suggests that by the 930’s GISP2 is about 4-6 years too short ”. However chronological adjustments totaling 19 years inserted into the GISP2 core, bring the series into alignment with the GRIP record including the prodigious NH4 spike centered on 1012 – 1014 blurring into 1020 in both cores [ See Figure 36 . p 165 ]. Either a marine impact or a bolide exploding in the lower atmosphere may have generated tsunami waves and ammonium residue later deposited and sealed in the Greenland ice. The argument for a cosmogenic tsunami is not weakened at all and there is no need to ‘remove ‘ the ammonium signal from the GISP2 and GRIP ice stratigraphy as the NH4 anomaly exists in both cores approximate to the date 1014 . The NH4 anomaly correlates very well with the dates for the European ‘sea flood ‘ chronicles and the sedimentary evidence in the Americas. This was not some mundane storm surge. The close passing 1014 comet identified by the retro-calculations of Sekanina and Yeomans may or may not be coincidental. There is however, an interesting entry in the Annales Magdaburgenses MGH SS ,xvi 165 for the year 1014 that may be worth exploring [ Tusk ?] : ” Stella … apparuit [ a star appeared ] …Probably a very bright meteor about noon ”  I cannot access that medieval annal to determine if there is a date attached or any other useful information. Best of luck for the other investigators .

   What is required is a high resolution analysis of the relevant ice core layers concentrated on the years 1010 – 1020 to search for extraterrestrial impact material and move the debate forward as Dallas Abbott and colleagues successfully did with their research into the 530’s and 540’s .

6. Stuart,

   When Mike Baillie discussed the “error” in GISP2, in his book A New light on the Black Death in 2006, he thought it was GISP2 that had the error, since the GICC05 ice core dates (that is GRIP, NGRIP and DYE3) seemed to be replicated, and hence more robust. However, upon further examination of the data after the publication of this book Mike proposed in 2007 (BAILLIE, M.G.L. 2008. doi.org/10.1029/2008GL034755), and in 2010 (Baillie, M.G.L. 2010. doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00099877) that the GRIP ice cores were too old by 7 years before AD 700. Then Mike and I published a paper in 2015 that proposed that GICC05 timescale that underpins the GRIP chronology was too old by 7 years during the entire of the 1st Millennium AD (BAILLIE, M.G.L. & J. MCANENEY. 2015. doi.org/10.5194/cp-11-105-2015). Six months after we published that paper, ice core workers, using the newly found “Miyake events” (enhanced radiocarbon and berylium 10 enrichment in the atmosphere from intense solar storms), of AD 774 and AD 993, where able to definitively tie the ice core chronology to the tree ring chronologies (Sigl et al. 2015. doi.org/10.1038/nature14565).

   So, the solar storms in 774 and 993 caused a sudden increase in atmospheric radiocarbon, which was then absorbed by vegetation, including trees. This sudden increase in radiocarbon concentration in these years is observed in tree ring chronologies from all across the world, and in both hemispheres. When radiocarbon is formed in the atmosphere, so too is Beryllium 10, which quickly precipitates out, and gets locked within the ice cores. What Sigl et al. did was to measure precisely the Beryllium 10 in the ice cores in the late 8th and 10th centuries, and confirmed that the GICC05 and hence GRIP timescale was indeed too old by 6-7 years in AD 993, which means that the Ammonia in the GRIP core dated to 1014 is also 6-7 years too old, and should be around 1020 or 1021. Furthermore, they were able to find tephra from the Icelandic Eldgja eruption occurring 7 years BEFORE the so called Millennium Eruption of Changbaishan on the China/Korean border. This later eruption has since been dated by historians as having occurred in 946. Later, Oppenheimer et al. (2017 doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2016.12.024) found a tree that was killed and buried by the Changbaishan destruction layer. By luck this tree was old enough to have grown across the 774 Miyake event. They were then able to identify the ring with the increased radiocarbon from the 774 Miyake event, and count outwards to the bark, and obtained a death date for the tree as AD 946.

   What this also means is that the Dating of the GISP2 core is pretty spot on in the 10th and 11th centuries, with the dating of the 938/9 Acidity peak (which tied to GRIP 932/3 acidity peak), and also the 1020/21 Ammonium signal in GISP2 is the same signal dated to 1014 in the GRIP core. GISP2 is not correct though as you head deeper into the core (ie. go back in time). By the early 7th century it is now 13 years too YOUNG. Then just before the start of the 6th century (14 meter gap), its offset changes again. If I remember correctly (and I haven’t looked at this in a while), Dallas Abbott have not corrected enough in their paper, and they need to shift the dates forward another few years (If you search Cosmic Tusk for my posts you will probably find where I discuss this, or maybe George can direct you. At least I think I posted about it here, but my memory is getting worse as the years go on).

   It also means that the cause of the the AD 536 and 540 tree ring events are now known to be due to large volcanic eruptions. In the erroneously dated GICC05 timescale there were eruptions in 529 and 533, which when moved forward 7 years (to correct for the offset) as proposed by Baillie (2007, 2010), Baillie and McAneney (2015) and confirmed by Sigl et al. (2015), resulted in these two volcanic horizons moving to 536 and 540.

   Even more recently (and still in preprint form due to being under peer review), the Sinnl ice core workers have re-examined the published GICC05 ice core data in the light of more refined measurement techniques upon new ice cores, and confirmed that their previous ice core dates were wrong (doi.org/10.5194/cp-2021-155), with part of the error being their belief that they had identified the historical eruptions of Vesuvius (AD 79) due to the coincidence of there being an eruption around AD 87 and there being an 8 year error in the core at this time. They effectively confirm McAneney and Baillie (2019)) proposed re-dating of the GRIP and GISP2 ice cores back to 1800 BC (doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2018.165).

   What this all boils down to, and the point that I was attempting to make, is that the Ammonium signal in the GRIP core dated to 1014 is wrong, it being around 6/7 years too old, and cannot now be in any way connected to Michaelmas flood of late September 1014. And given that the original argument proposed by Baillie that the ammonium signal was cosmogenic, then it does indeed weaken the physical evidence of the flood being a cosmogenic tsunami (i.e. we no longer have a physical and precisely dated cosmogenic signal that links the two.

   Yes, there may be reports of fireballs and things falling from the skies around 1014, but again, those fireballs do not come with dates in 1014 to link to the the precisely recorded date of the flood. And yeas there may have been a very close approach of a comet in 1014, but the calculations show that it would have made its closest approach in February of 1014, around 7 months before the flood (when the earth would be on the other side of the sun to the close approach point).

7. Jon , Mike Baillie was quite explicit in his discussion of the GISP2 ice core in New Light on the Black Death [ pp 165 -166 ] that it was problematized by gaps or rather lost sections – namely ” the lost core section in the sixth century …..seen to span c 595 – 522 ” …Presumably this is the 14 meter gap that you now argue starts ‘before’ the 6th century ? .Your convoluted ‘reasoning ‘ aside and taking into consideration the fixed points , how was this huge missing section in the American GISP2 core reconciled so that the GISP2 core is now the preferred reliable chronology ?

   ” It also means that the cause of the AD 536 and 540 tree ring events are now known to be due to large volcanic eruptions …….there were eruptions in 529 and 533 which when moved forward 7 years [ to correct for the offset ] …..resulted in these two volcanic horizons moving to 536 and 540 ” .

   No Jon , your logical fallacy is the ‘false alternative ‘ and the revised chronology does not purge the existence of the ammonium anomaly [ a probable impact proxy ] whether it is situated at 539 or moved forward to 546, nor the elevated carbon , nickel tin and cosmic spherules assemblage in the ice discussed in the 2014 Abbott , McCafferty et al paper that are almost certainly cometary particles in a century notable for intense fireball activity . In fact the spacings of the Ni , Sn Fe and cosmic spherule peaks – 533 ; 536 -37 and 539 [ 539 /40 ; 543 /44 and 545 / 46 in the revised series that are still within the 536 – 45 tree ring downturn and solar veiling event ] correspond quite well with the the 3 .3 year periodic circuits of Enckes Comet at a time when ,according to the archeo-astronomical studies of Whipple and Hamid, there ‘was a violent burst of material from a Taurid Complex object ” moving in an orbit ” of similar shape and longitude of perihelion ” to Comet Encke https://meteorshowersonline.com/showers/taurids.html ] .
   .Dallas Abbott and her colleagues did not spot that .They just assumed the culprit was Halley and the Eta Aquarid stream intersecting the Earths ecliptic plane in precessional descending node between AD 528- 537. With a bit of creative visualization the diminishing magnitude of the Sn/Fe/Ni/spherule triannual peaks is what may be observed terrestrially after a disintegration event in the inner solar system as the debris dissipates . Nor did Dallas , Mike Baillie and yourself factor in the elevated 1400 – 1500 AD cobalt indices identified in the peat mire research of Franzen and Cropp published in 2007 .[ There are other proxies apart from ice cores . How is it that you and Mike are not aware of this study ?] Cobalt at those concentrations could only have filtered down from space , the centennial timespan [ there is another bracketing 300 – 400 AD concomitant with the declining stages of the old Roman Empire ] is exactly what one would see with the Clube – Napier bombardment episode model and there is now a scientific backdrop to the Late Antiquity fireball sightings ..The 500 – 600 AD cobalt surge in the peat mire analyses is the clincher . So why are you so [ tendentiously it seems to me ] inclined to deny the evidence that logically points to an extraterrestrial source for the enhanced cobalt , tin nickel and spherules in the sixth century ice and peat stratigraphy ? You and Mike must have been aware of the 2014 Abbott et al paper and the 2007 Franzen and Cropp publication. What’s going on Jon ? The Peatland /Ice Age Hypothesis Revised , Adding a Possible Glacial Pulse Trigger , L.G Franzen ; R Cropp , Geografiska Annaler ,2007

   The more plausible explanation upon consideration of the range of evidence for the solar dust veil and climatic recession of the mid sixth century is summarized in the Abstract of the 2014 Abbott et al paper : ” Both cometary dust and volcanic sulfate probably contributed to the profound global dimming during AD 536 and 537 “. A rare convergence of volcanic eruptions and cometary debris influx . Not one or the other. This is a common mistake in the age of hyper-specialized academic research . It is probably the same convergent pattern for at least two , possibly three more , of Baillie’s narrowest ring events : 206 -207 BC , 1628 – 23[ very close to the Tell el Hammam airburst over the Dead Sea ] , circa 2350 BC and indeed the duration of the Little Ice Age .Chronological revision of the GRIP ice core record by 6- 7 years makes no difference to this argument .Its just shuffling cards that have the same prints .

   I have reservations about the revised 6-7 year GRIP chronology for another reason and it concerns the 626 /27 ammonium spike and meteor swarm observations . Michael Purser ,after a lecture in Dublin [ Baillie p 123 ] noticed that ” in frescoes relating to the Siege of Constantinople in 626 …there were ‘stars falling from the sky ‘ associated with a turbulent sea . Corroborating this fireball imagery is an entry in the West Syrian Chronicles dated to the same year : AD 626 Shooting stars to the north . A presage of Arab conquests in Asia Minor ” As with the 1014 ammonium spike and tsunami the scientific data and the historical records seem to match more persuasively . If the 1014 AD is to be ‘put to bed ‘ Jon then surely a thorough scanning of the Greenland [ and South Pole ] ice core sections 1010 – 1020 AD should be undertaken at a minimum . After all , you are wrong about the elimination of an extraterrestrial vector for the sixth century climatic downturn when the evidence was always there .

8. Stuart,

   Let me be 100% clear about one thing. I not saying that the early 11th century ammonium anomaly does not exist, what I am saying is that the evidence shows conclusively that it is not in AD 1014.

   “Presumably this is the 14 meter gap that you now argue starts ‘before’ the 6th century ? .Your convoluted ‘reasoning ‘ aside and taking into consideration the fixed points , how was this huge missing section in the American GISP2 core reconciled so that the GISP2 core is now the preferred reliable chronology ?”

   Also, for clarity, GISP2 is not the preferred chronology, it just so happens that 20 years ago it was the most accessible resource by those wanting to look at ice core chemistry, as the Americans published the whole data, warts and all, online for anyone to see. I have a fondness for GISP2, but only because I have played with it for so long, and a whole reem of chemistry data was published. We now have newer ice cores though, that have been analysed with better techniques and further interdisciplinary information to constrain the chronologies (such as direct comparison with ice core beryllium and radiocarbon, and volcanic forcing effects observed in so-called blue-ring analysis of tree rings). One such core is the NEEM core, which looks to be excellent, as well as the TUNU core, and the new EastGRIP core with the implementation of GICC21 which seems promising. So these would be the preferred cores.
   On the matter of the GISP2 gap and fixed points. This is easy enough, but long winded, to address. If you look to the data published by Zelinski et al. (1994) (those who analysed and did the layer counting of the American project GISP2), the 14.24 metre gap in the ice (which is due to the core fragmenting when being retrieved from the bore hole), is dated as extending from 543 to 614. So, one has to ask this, how is it that one can accurately do a layer count from the top of the ice down if there is 14 metres of ice that came out of the bore hole as ice cubes? The answer is you cannot, but you can do a linear interpolation across the gap. It was also believed that the Danes working on their cores thought they had found Vesuvius of 79 AD in the right place in their ice core GRIP (from memory, but could have been Dye3 or NGRIP), and so to wrestle back some chronological control, the American ice core workers aligned what would approximately have been a late 1st century AD acid spike with 79 AD, and counted the layers upwards from there. The trouble is that the 6th century gap is not the only gap in the ice between the Vesuvius signal and the bottom of the missing section of ice. There are two other gaps in ice in the mid-4th to early 5th Century. There is a 4-metre gap between 388-408 and a 3.4 mtere gap between 364-380 (dates from Zekinski et al.’s chronology). So, this again caused problems, and so when it came to the chronology between 408 and 543 (again Zelinski’s chronology), they had to rely upon linear interpolation across the gaps, and published their best scientific estimate of the dates.
   Now here is the thing, the European ice core workers had far fewer issues with gaps in their chronology. They analysed the data GISP2 and compared it to their own data from Dye3, GRIP and NGRIP cores (the three cores that were used to construct the Greenland Ice Core Chronology ’05 or GICC05 for short (Vinther et al. 2006). They then were able to tie the GISP2 ice core to their GICC05 chronology by matching patterns of chemical signatures in GISP2 to their ice cores and published this list of so-called Tie Dates (Sierstad et al. 2014), similar to what Baillie was doing in New Light on the Black Death (2006), but with much more chemical data (one can think of this as being very similar to the cross dating of tree samples, where you look for unique patterns of ring in two or more wooden samples to match). So, what this effectively did was to tell us the offset in chronology between GICC05 and GISP2 ice cores. But as Baillie and McAneney (2015) and McAneney and Baillie (2019) have shown, you can anchor the ice core chronologies to true calendar dates using precisely dated tree rings. With all this information you can then quantify the true offset of these ice cores with real time.

   As I mentioned previously, around the start of the 7th century AD, the GISP2 ice core is around 13 years too young. This is because we have now identified that GICC05 was too old by 7 years, and there was an offset of around 20 years between GICC05 and GISP2. So, the very large acid layer in GICC05 dated in that chronology to be around 619 is dated to 639 in GISP2. If GICC05 is 7 years too old (at this point which has definitively been shown to be the case), then it means that the eruption occurred in 626/7, and that GISP2 is now 12/13 years too young. Therefore, the top of the 6th century gap should have a real calendar date of around AD 601.

   Now let us look at the bottom of the ice gap. The pattern of the chemical signatures in GICC05 and GISP2 identify the volcanic horizon of 516 (GICC05) and the volcanic horizon of around 530 (GISP2) as the same eruption. GICC05 was identified as being 6 years too old at this point, and the eruption occurred in 522. Which means that GISP2 is around 8 years too young. This will mean that the bottom of the GISP2 gap dated to around 543 by Zelinski et al. needs to be moved back 8 years, which means that it begins just before 536! In other words, the 6th century gap in GISP2 spans from 535 to 601, just when interesting things are happening in the world. So, it does not contain the chemical signatures of the climate altering eruptions in 536, 540 and 574. It also does not contain the ammonium signal dated to 539 in GRIP (and which will actually be around 546 in true calendar date). You can see how the GICC05 and GISP2 Ice cores are offset from each other and true calendar dats in Table 1 of our paper here https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/absolute-treering-dates-for-the-late-bronze-age-eruptions-of-aniakchak-and-thera-in-light-of-a-proposed-revision-of-icecore-chronologies/0E06053BFD90C1EA58ED8822814DC6F8#article (see also the supplementary material for a synopsis of the GICC05 error).

   Now when we go publication of Abbot et al. (2014), they examined a portion of the core from depth originally dated by Zelinski et al. – using the Meese Stowers timescale – to between 534.1 and 543.8. They then argued that these dates should be moved back by 2 years, but as we now know this is not far enough, and so they must be moved a further 6 (maybe even 7) years. The conclusion is that Abbott et al did not sample any cosmic material after 535/6. However, when you examine the data in the above paper and the data In a second paper by the authors in 2014 (https://doi.org/10.7916/D89886DG), you see that they report an increase in cosmic material in a layer they date to 537, which would actually be around 530 or 531 in true calendar date. This may well be significant, since comet Halley came to perihelion in September AD 530, and more importantly its descending node was close to Earth’s orbit, which it crossed late July-early August 530, which means that when the earth next encountered that point a few months later it may have met a significant meteor swarm of dust and debris (maybe even the same the following year). It is interesting also to note that in the Bristlecone pine tree ring series for the 6th century, there are only 5 frost ring events (signals of acute unseasonal weather shifts over the Rockies), dated to 522, 531, 536, 540 and 574. There are 4 large volcanic eruption events in the 6th century recorded in ice cores, 522, 536, 540 and 574. The frost ring in 531 appears to be an orphan with no volcanic cause. So, was it just a climate aberration (after all we do have other frost rings without a volcanic eruption), or could it be linked to dust injection into the upper atmosphere from the recent passage of Halley?

   The caveat though is that when you look at Abbot et al.’s data, they have an average of 2 cosmic particles per year, and their “excess” is 3 particles. That could be argued not to be much of an excess. Also, they only looked at approximately 10 years worth of ice core, so we do not know if the data is representative of average years, or excessive years, or even low years for cosmic spherule input. Still, it is interesting to consider that perhaps Comet Halley did influence climate after its 530 apparitions.

   Moving on to Franzen’s peat data. I am aware of his work, and indeed Lars was kind enough to send me his entire data set, which I analysed myself. What I found was that the raw data was very messy, and in order to get the peaks observed in his publication, you had to fit a long period moving average (something like a 40 to 50 year moving average). When you do this, then it is a bit more difficult to have confidence in the apparition of small peaks appearing in the data, as they could be random artifacts. Also, the other issue is that time was determined using calibrated radiocarbon ages, which is not precise, and so there is a lot of smear in the data. This does not diminish the data set in anyway, as it is interesting to see how the Rare Earth Element profile (presumably from cosmic particles) has varied over time, but you cannot use the data to pinpoint a single year in which something happened, only trends over long periods of time.

   “I have reservations about the revised 6-7 year GRIP chronology for another reason and it concerns the 626 /27 ammonium spike and meteor swarm observations.”

   By all means, reservations are good. However, the ice core chronologies for the last two millennia are now pretty robust (barring a few things I would like to see tied up). There can be no doubt that there were large volcanic eruptions in AD 536, 540 and 626/7. The volcanic sulphur (and in some instances the tephra) is there in the ice cores to see, and we now know that the ice cores around this time are ties to true calendrical dates via the robust tree ring chronologies. Note that this does not mean that impacts etc did not happen. They perhaps did, but maybe they were not climatically effective, and perhaps they do not show up in the geophysical records. A case in point. I mentioned before about the Ammonium signal dated to 1908 seen in GISP2, which was interpreted by Baillie as being from Tunguska. Now this may well be a correct interpretation, however, science relies upon reproducibility and replication of results. Unfortunately, GRIP does not have ammonium data published after the 17th century, and so cannot be checked. The new NEEM core does have ammonium data, but when you look for the ammonium peak in 1908 it just isn’t there. This could be a geographical thing, that the ammonium just wasn’t deposited at the more Northly NEEM site. This would fit better with the scenario of the ammonium originating from forest fires in North America, more than ammonium created in a high-altitude airburst. The forest fire plume just did not extend that far north over Greenland. I say it would fit better, but it may not be the actual answer.

   Don’t get me wrong, in all of this, as I am not averse to the impact hypotheses. I was convinced by Baillie’s arguments up to 2007 when I started to see that the ice cores had issues with their chronology, and chronology is very important in all of this research, especially when looking at climatic events that don’t seem to have a volcanic origin. I also think that historians should not be so dismissive of what people contemporary to events may have recorded. Though sometimes, certain things may get the unfair blame. I personally think that comets got the blame for the 536 and 540 event because people saw them in the sky, and could not possibly know that their environmental woes were caused by distant volcanic eruptions.

9. Jon , you are smarter and obviously more accredited than I am . If you can excuse my occasionally acerbic tone , it arises from frustration with some of the contorted corridors and loose ends in this debate . I will admit to some perplexity with this passage of yours : ” By the early 7th century [ GISP2 ] is now 13 years too young . Then just before the start of the 6th century [ 14 meter gap ] , its offset changes again . If I remember correctly …..Dallas Abbott [ et al ?] have not corrected enough in their paper , and they need to shift the dates forward another few years ”

   Can you disentangle and reconfigure the information in this excerpt [ Abbott et al ] as it relates to the dating uncertainties in your statement above : ” The volume of extraterrestrial dust from AD 533 to 540 measured in our GISP2 samples declines over time . The first and simplest interpretation is that dust from a single comet pass produced declining volumes of cosmic dust starting in AD 533 and ending in AD 540 . The data also permit a second interpretation involving multiple injections of cosmic dust . The volume of dust in greatest in AD 533 and declines until AD 536 . Later in AD 536 there is a new [ influx ] that declines until AD 537 . There is a final injection of cosmic dust in AD 538 that declines until AD 539 -40 . We cannot distinguish among these interpretations ”

   Now, to complicate matters I mistakenly assumed this was the GRIP core when in fact it is the GISP2 . [ I made a typo error above too that should read 1400 – 1500 BP ]. As I remarked earlier , if Dallas Abbott’s sample analysis is correct , the 533 – 536 – 538 interval peaks suggest interactions with the debris of a short period comet or a wider complex [ the Taurids ] in the aftermath of a disintegration episode. It is a small sample though .The Franzen and Cropp cobalt/REE index however , suggests repeated influxes of cometary dust over at least a century [ 500 – 600 AD … There is another that may interest you spanning 2400 – 2250 BC ] . There is no doubt a cluster of upper scale VEI eruptions contributed to the 6th century climatic cooling Yet , the best appraisal of the evidence points to a convergence of cometary debris / impacts and vulcanism . This may explain why the longer ‘narrowest ring ‘ sequences are so rare across the Holocene . Mike proposed this ‘catastrophic package” idea in his 1999 book Exodus to Arthur .

10. HI Stuart,

    Regarding my previous statement “By the early 7th century [ GISP2 ] is now 13 years too young . Then just before the start of the 6th century [ 14 meter gap ] , its offset changes again . If I remember correctly …..Dallas Abbott [ et al ?] have not corrected enough in their paper , and they need to shift the dates forward another few years ”

    I have explained above how the dates in the GISP2 core are too young by around 13 years in the early 7th century BC with respect to true calendar dates. For example the volcanic acid from the 626/627 eruption is found in GISP2 around 639/40 (going from memory). This is physically above the 14 metre ice gap. Below the 14 metre gap the GISP2 ice core is around 8 years too young with respect to true calendar dates, and so the GISP2 dates much be shifted BACKWARDS in time So when I said that Dallas Abbott et al. had not corrected enough in their paper, I mean that they only shifted the GISP2 chronology back by 2 years, rather than 8 years. I realise now that I said they had to shift their dates FORWARD, which is of course not correct. I had a bit of a brain fart with that one. Apologies for the confusion.

    The reason why Abbott et al. decided to shift GISP2 dates back only 2 years was because they thought they had identified a chemical signal from two historical dust storms recorded in China. There were two dust Storms at the end of 535 and 536 recorded in Chinese records, and Abbott et al. identified to excesses in Magnesium and Calcium (believed to be markers of continental dust) a year apart which they believed to be the signature of these Chinese dust storms. This resulted in a sulphate excess around what they believed to be 537, which they then linked to the 533 +/2 volcanic acid in the GICC05 reported by Larsen et al. (2008) (Note Larsen et al believed that this was the the eruption signal from the AD 536 eruption, and proposed moving the ice core dates forward 3 years, which resulted in Baillie’s 2008 paper arguing that it should be a 7 year shift giving a better match to tree ring data). So, Abbott et al. had the right idea to move GISP2 dates back but for the wrong reason, that reason being their erroneous assumption of finding dust from South China.

    With regard your question

    “Can you disentangle and reconfigure the information in this excerpt [ Abbott et al ] as it relates to the dating uncertainties in your statement above : ” The volume of extraterrestrial dust from AD 533 to 540 measured in our GISP2 samples declines over time . The first and simplest interpretation is that dust from a single comet pass produced declining volumes of cosmic dust starting in AD 533 and ending in AD 540 . The data also permit a second interpretation involving multiple injections of cosmic dust . The volume of dust in greatest in AD 533 and declines until AD 536 . Later in AD 536 there is a new [ influx ] that declines until AD 537 . There is a final injection of cosmic dust in AD 538 that declines until AD 539 -40 . We cannot distinguish among these interpretations ”

    For each of the dates given by Abbott et al. above, subtract about 6 years and you will have something closer to the true date (eg 533 in Abbott should be 527 in true calendar dates). This is because, as mentioned, GISP2 is around 8 years too young in the 1st half of the 6th century. Abbott et al. moved the dates BACK by 2 years (i.e. making the core 2 years older), but they needed to shift it back a further 6 years to be more in line with true calendar dates.

    The contribution of atmospheric loading from coinciding cosmic dust events (whatever their cause) and large volcanic eruptions on the climate has been something I have entertained in the past. It is not impossible that perhaps during periods of increased cosmic activity, that it only takes a large eruption to tip the balance to cause a dramatic climate event, of short or even long duration. But things can be a bit more complicated than that. For example the AD 536 eruption appears to be the catalyst for what is now known as the Late Antiquity Little Ice Age (LALIA, a period of around 125 years where the climate was much cooler than normal). Buntgen et al (2006, DOI.org/10.1038/NGEO2652) noted that the 536 eruption occured at the beginning of a period of decreasing solar irradiance, and the LALIA was sustained by the combinations of further eruptions – in 540, 547, 574 and 627 – and climate feedback mechanism (from ocean and sea-ice feedbacks). The decrease in the solar irradiance in this period is believed to be inherent to the solar cycle (observed in 10 Beryllium data from ice cores).

    You mention the period 2400-2250 BC. I dont know if you have seen this paper or not https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301621337_Why_we_shouldn’t_ignore_the_mid-24th_century_BC_when_discussing_the_2200-2000_BC_climate_anomaly#fullTextFileContent. While we do not have a correctly dated ice core chronology before 2000 BC (I am working on it, as are others), from the work I have done I suspect that the 2350 BC event may actually be volcanic, however, I currently do not see any evidence that the sudden beginning of the 2200 BC event is volcanic in origin, and it may well be cosmic.

    You also mention the 1628 BC event. This event is most certainly volcanic. Indeed, Baillie believed it to be volcanic in origin, but proposed that it was the eruption of Thera. We now know that the 1628 BC event was probably not due to Thera, but rather the eruption of Aniakchak, Alaska (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/absolute-treering-dates-for-the-late-bronze-age-eruptions-of-aniakchak-and-thera-in-light-of-a-proposed-revision-of-icecore-chronologies/0E06053BFD90C1EA58ED8822814DC6F8).

11. ” The caveat though is that when you look at Abbott et al’s data ,they have an average of 2 cosmic particles per year and their ‘excess ‘ is 3 particles . That could be argued not to be much of an excess . Also , they only looked at approximately 10 years worth of ice core ,so we do not know if the data is representative of average years , or excessive years , or even low years for cosmic spherule input ”

    Actually, the ‘excess’ enrichment is not 3 : 2 but a 16 times enhancement in cometary particle deposition at the start of their 10 year window analysis compared to three years afterward . Here is the relevant passage as it relates to Figure 4 : ” the maximum volume of extraterrestrial dust was apparently around 16 times smaller in AD 536 than it was in AD 533 [ Fig 4 ] ” Furthermore , the spherules are in a mixed assemblage of Sn and Ni particles and marine micro-fossils suggestive of one or more oceanic impacts which raises the question as to what other anomalies are in the ice – and in what concentrations – beyond Abbott et al’s 10 year horizon study . And there is another caveat outlined in their paper : ” Our methods do not allow us to constrain the abundance of nanometer -sized extraterrestrial particles . The latter are fine aerosol sized ,the most likely particles to remain in the atmosphere for months …and to reduce the transparency of the atmosphere during their residence ….. It is possible that there was an injection of fine aerosol -size extraterrestrial dust ……that we did not observe due to our small sample sizes and relatively low magnifications ” So , Abbott and her colleagues – and others reviewing their research – may have underestimated the volume of cometary debris and how long it may have lingered in the atmosphere in the form of nanometer sized particles

    AD 526 [ 527 AD according to Theophanes ] in the revised chronology is one of the dates for the day time May 20 or 29 violent and fiery destruction of Antioch chronicled by John Malalas . A Coptic Egyptian source described regional spot-fires associated with this disaster that may be a clue to a shedding high altitude bolide [ Mike Baillie had not noticed the Coptic chronicler’s ]….Dallas Abbott and her co authors emphasized that despite calendrical dating uncertainties in the ice cores , the seasons within an annual layer can be fairly well analyzed and the peak influx of cometary dust occurred in the northern hemisphere Spring of AD 533. This could translate to May AD 526 or 527 in the revised GISP2 chronology . Another door of conjecture opens. Even allowing for calendrical precession considerations , the daytime Taurids encompass May – July ..Moreover, as I pointed out previously , ” the spacings of the Ni , Sn Fe and cosmic spherule peaks [ in the Abbott et al paper – Fig 4 ] …correspond quite well with the 3.3 year periodic circuits of Encke’s Comet at a time when ,according to the archeo -astronomical studies of Whipple and Hamid , there was a violent burst of material from a Taurid Complex object ” moving in an orbit of similar shape and longitude of perihelion to Comet Encke ” ‘

    Whether the timescale is 533 – 539/40 or shuffled to 526 /27 – 533/534 , its the same deck of cards with the same prints . ” The overall patterns of morphology and elemental abundance ” of the Sn and Ni rich particles ” as underscored by Abbott and her co researchers “are most consistent with a cometary source ” and the excess composition in the ice cores is not 3 to a factor of 2 in just that one decadal time-span. The unusual presence of marine micro -fossils mixed in with the cometary particles also allude to ocean impacts . No one can deny the conclusive evidence for a series of volcanic eruptions [ AD 536 ; 540 and 546 in the updated chronology ] It is not denied by me . However, a cometary influence cannot realistically be divested from the climatic disruptions of the sixth century.

    ” Moving on to Franzen’s peat data …..Lars was kind enough to send me his entire data set which I analyzed myself . What I found was that the raw data was very messy ,and in order to get the peaks observed …you had to fit a long period moving average [ something like a 40 to 50 year moving average ] . When you do this it is a bit more difficult to have confidence in the apparition of small peaks ….in the data …the other issue is that time was determined using calibrated radiocarbon ages ,which is not precise ,and so there is a lot of smear in the data . This does not diminish the data set in any way ….but you cannot use the data to pinpoint a single year ..only trends over long periods of time ”

    This is your account of a personal communication with Lars Franzen . If indeed you have personally analyzed Roger Cropp and Lars Franzen’s peat mire data why did you omit any mention of additional tephra- horizons [ tephra-chronology ] and the historical lead contaminant deposition record [ quite good for at least 2000 – 3000 years ] as chronological markers used to tighten their all mires REE / cobalt index ? You must have known they did not just rely on over 100 calibrated carbon 14 dates as they discussed complementary dating techniques on p12 : ” For this project , more than 100 calibrated ……….AMS 14 C datings have been made in vertical profiles . In addition tephrochronology has been used ……as well as geochemical signal levels such as for the element lead [ Renberg et al , 2000 ,2001 . Individual tephra horizons have been identified by the use of SEM-EDX ” I think we can have a reasonable degree of confidence [ agreed – not individual years ] in the dataset with the tephra layer fixtures and the atmospheric lead pollution tracking records . The cobalt and rare earth element indices escalating from AD 1300 – 1350 visible in the ” REE -index and Cobalt vector all mires 0 – 7000 Cal BP ‘ chart match the the ice core chemistry [ nitrate & ammonium ] displayed and discussed in Mike Baillie’s New Light on the Black Death : the Cosmic Connection ” [ and indeed vindicate his thesis generally ] that points to another cometary debris bombardment episode in the 14th century. The REE /cobalt index looks fairly robust over the last 2 – 3 millennia at least
    ” Using the historical atmospheric lead deposition record as a chronological marker in sediment deposits in Europe ‘ , Renberg et al , The Holocene https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1191/095968301680223468 Are there any published reviews of Franzen and Cropps paper we can be directed to ‘Jon’ ?

    Aside from the geochemical evidence in the peat mire and ice core stratigraphy there are fragmentary historical records of comet apparitions, fireball swarms, quakes and destructive bolides causing fatalities not included in Baillie’s or Clube and Napier’s books that reinforce the need to scan the ice cores over the entire sixth century . Here is a sample from Gregory of Tours ‘ History of the Franks ‘ writing in the latter decades of the sixth century :
    ” In the fifth year of King Childeberts reign [ AD 580 ?] …..In Touraine ….a bright light was seen to traverse the sky and then disappear in the East . A sound of trees crashing to the ground was heard throughout the whole region …..it was audible over fifty miles and more ….Bordeaux was… shaken by an earthquake ……Huge rocks [cascaded ] down from the mountain peaks of the Pyrenees ,crushing …the local inhabitants and their cattle . Villages around Bordeaux were burned by a fire sent from heaven….The city of Orleans blazed with a great conflagration ……A most serious epidemic followed these prodigies ”

    ” Some said that they saw the heavens aflame ….A wind from the south raged with such great violence that it knocked down forest trees ,destroyed houses .carried off fences and blew men off their feet and killed them . This wind devastated an area some mile or more across but no one ever discovered how far the damage continued ….The moon was darkened and a comet appeared in the sky . A serious epidemic followed among the common people “[ date uncertain . Just before AD 583 ]

    ” In the seventh year of King Childeberts reign [ AD 582 ] ……..a comet appeared again , and the sky seemed particularly black where it passed across the heavens ……gleaming so bright and spreading wide its tail .From it there issued an enormous beam of light ,which from a distance looked like the great pall of smoke over a great conflagration ”

    ” The sky was overcast and it was raining . Suddenly a great ball of fire fell from the sky and moved some considerable distance through the air .shining so brightly that visibility was as clear as high noon ” [ AD 583 ]

    ” A great beacon traversed the heavens lighting up the land far and wide …….There was an earthquake in the district of Anger’s ” [ possibly AD 587 ]

    ” This same year two islands in the sea were consumed by fire which fell from the sky . They burned for seven whole days ….they were completely destroyed ,together with the inhabitants and their flocks ….All were reduced to ash and the sea covered everything .Many maintained that all the portents which I have [ witnessed ] in ….October ,when the sky seemed to be on fire ,were really the reflection of this conflagration ” This appears to be a 580’s anecdotal record of a bolide and possible tsunami affecting offshore islands [ The Scilly Islands in the waters between England and France were inundated and one of the islands split around AD 500 This may or may not be relevant ]

    ” so bright a light illumined a wide spread of lands in the middle of the night that you would have thought that it was high noon . On a number of occasions fiery globes were also seen in the night-time so that they seemed to light up the whole earth ” [ AD 589 /90 ]

    That is a compilation of seven accounts between just AD 580 and 590 in the Frankish kingdom [ formerly Gaul ] alone on the testimony of one chronicler . This leads one to speculate as to what other terrifying phenomena parallel human societies observed and experienced in the sixth century not recorded for posterity . The last entry is compelling proof that Bishop Gregory faithfully recorded meteor activity as the noctilucent phenomena is precisely what occurred after the 1908 Tunguska event. It is hard to believe the report is unreliable as the bright nights “are such a distinctive signature of meteorological disturbance after an airburst bolide or meteor shower . This is aperiod of interest where the Greenland and Antarctic ice cores should be inspected .

12. ” Aside from the geochemical evidence in the peat mire and ice core stratigraphy ” ……
    Correction : geochemical and extraterrestrial [ cometary ] evidence

13. “This is your account of a personal communication with Lars Franzen . If indeed you have personally analyzed Roger Cropp and Lars Franzen’s peat mire data why did you omit any mention of additional tephra- horizons [ tephra-chronology ] and the historical lead contaminant deposition record [ quite good for at least 2000 – 3000 years ] as chronological markers used to tighten their all mires REE / cobalt index ?”

    The data that I was kindly provided (back around 2011 I believe) was the their Rare Earth Element data file that they used to construct published figures, and as such had already been constrained by their chronology. This chronology was (as mentioned in their publication) based upon 100 calibrated radiocarbon dates, tephrochronology, and the assumption of a constant growth rate of bog. I was not provided the radiocarbon depth profiles, nor their tephrochronology analysis to verify their chronology. But the thing of course is that radiocarbon dating is imprecise, and will have error bars of +/- decades, even if you are using a Bayesian depth model. There would therefor be potentially around a 50 year uncertainty of a date within the bog core. Indeed Franzen and Cropp state that their temporal resolution of sampling is around 50 years, and this is BEFORE they mention their chronology control using radiocarbon and tephrochronology.

    Now the thing about the tephrochronology is that in 2007 there was a small number of eruptions that had precise dates, that tephra that had been identified as belonging to a historically dated eruption, and these all tend to be with the last millennia. We have made progress in the last decade, and now have positively identified tephra that we can pin to a precise year (or within +/- 1 year or so). To my knowledge the earliest positive tephras that we can assign to a single year event (+/- 1 year) are from Okmak around 43 +/- 1 BC, and Aniakchak in 1628 +/-1 BC. Any other tephra horizons in the geological and palaeoecological records come with calibrated radiocarbon dates, some of which may have uncertainties of decades and some have uncertainties in excess of a century. So yes, Franzen and Cropp used Tephrochronology to help with chronological control, but because of their sampling resolution, radiocarbon dating and tephrochronology and the temporal uncertainties involved, then their chronology corresponding to dates before the second millennium will be less robust. Thus, when presented with a peak depicting a sudden influx of REE material in the bog, we cannot assign it with any confidence to a peak of Ammonium in the Ice core records. That’s not to say that the two signals are not correlated, merely that we cannot robustly link the two of them as being caused by the same event. There are quite a number of Ammonium and Nitrate events in the GISP2 record, and biomass burning is a legitimate mechanism for many of them, but the question of course is how does one discern, purely from the ammonium and nitrate signals in the ice core record, the difference between a seasonal wildfire and a cosmogenic signal.

    Also, as mentioned previously, the raw REE concentration data is extremely noisy, and it requires a long period moving mean (30+ year moving mean) to extract a signal from the noise. I haven’t looked at the data in a while, but I believe that the data is noisy enough to have a large standard deviation (which is the uncertainty of the mean), such that the many smaller, narrower peaks, may not carry enough confidence in them being real structures. I will have to look again at the data myself, as I cannot recall at this point what that result was. However, the trend over the centuries and millennia does seem to be real, even if we cannot be certain of the micro-structure in the data.

14. You have not responded to my correction of your erroneous statement that the extraterrestrial particle excess ‘ in the Abbott et al research paper was approximately 3 in contrast to an average of 2 particles per year ” when in fact the cosmic dust assemblage volume was 16 times higher at the start of their 10 year window analysis compared to 3 years afterward. I quoted the relevant passage above . Nor have you commented on the events of AD 526 – 27 in relation to the revised GISP2 chronology, or the bolide , fireball swarm , noctilucent phenomena and comet observations chronicled in Gregory of Tours History of the Franks concerning the period AD 580 – 590 when you must be aware of their significance in the context of the sixth century climate havoc. You have not so much ‘put it to bed ‘ as thrown an incurious blanket over it ‘Jon” . The real Jonny McAeneny, who strikes me as erudite and intellectually honest – not a sophist impersonator – would be interested to debate this subject matter and the Taurid collision hazards . He posted this entry on his Twitter account on October 2 citing a new research paper on the Taurid Meteor Complex : ” More large and potential earth hazards , identified within the Taurid Complex [ thought to be from the break up of a large inner solar system comet ] Taurid complex smoking gun : Detection of cometary activity ‘ You , however, are uncharacteristically dissembling , evasive and have not mentioned the Taurids once on this discussion thread . Nor have you acknowledged the lead contamination proxy as another dating technique used by Franzen and Cropp. It’s there in the text : ” as well as geochemical signal levels such as for the element lead ” . And I cited a related publication : ” Using the historical atmospheric lead deposition record as a chronological marker in sediment deposits in Europe ” , Renberg et al , The Holocene , 2001 . We now know that ‘detailed lead pollution measurements in an array of 13 ice cores spanning nearly half the Arctic [ show ] surprisingly similar temporal variability during the past 2 millennia until the Industrial Revolution ” ncbi.nlm.nih.gov./pmc/articles/PMC6660774 It should logically follow the northern European and sub Arctic peat mires would manifest a similar temporal variability in lead contaminant deposition over the past 2 millennia enabling the proxy to be used as a chronological tracker . There may well be smudging in the order of decades in the data . That said , the H8 and H9 REE peaks with some adjustments, correspond well with a selection of the Greenland temperature reconstructions , mindful that they have a 50 year moving average error margin themselves .The cobalt and REE series are locked ” in phase ” allowing for subtle variations over the expanse [ AD 1300 – 1800 ] of the Little Ice Age…Now that is intriguing . Both series show an uptick around 1300 – 1350 with the REE spike [ or interpretive ‘artifact ‘] dominating the REE multi centennial LIA sequence at a time of comet sightings fireballs , “quakes ” floods , global tree ring growth downturns famine and mass deaths . It was never my argument to “assign ammonium or nitrate signals in a single ice core year to the REE and cobalt peaks.. Nor is it necessary . Read the eyewitness reports of the Paris Medical Faculty and Hecker’s description of the “fiery meteor….far in the East ” before the Cyprus earthquake …An Arabic source even links the plague to a “high explosion ”

    ” The data that I was kindly provided [ back around 2011 I believe ] was their Rare Earth Element data file ………..I was not provided the radiocarbon depth profiles , nor their tephrochronology analysis to verify their chronology ” Thanks for the belated admission . There is also a juxtaposed cobalt vector series and you said previously Lars sent you his ” entire data set ” which you analyzed yourself . His entire data set apart from the missing items you have not analyzed at all ?

    If you were sincerely interested in the veracity of Franzen and Cropps research results you surely would have requested these details [ you omitted any confirmation of in your initial review of the data here ] that you defined as ‘very messy ” .

    Having reviewed Jonny’s paper co authored with Mike – ” Absolute tree ring dates for the Late Bronze Age eruptions of Aniakchak and Thera in light of a proposed revision of ice core chronologies ” [ Antiquity Vol. 93 ,Issue 367 ,Feb. 2019 ] Figure 1 caught my attention : the chart synchronizing the 1700 – 1600 BC GISP2 , NGRIP , GRIP ice core records and the Irish oak chronology . There seem to be two growth minima troughs with no discernable sulfate signals . I cannot see the graphed annual ring counts so these are estimates : 1682 – 75 [ ? ] and 1642 – 34 [ ?] . The 1610 weak volcanic sulfate signal also perceptibly ‘sits’ in another oak downturn [ 1614 – 1603 ? ] The eruption did not precipitate the downturn …The 1653 signal may also be interpreted as stationed in a lull [ 1663 – 1644 ?] ..This leaves the 1628 /27 sulfate signal as the causative eruption for the 1628 – 23 narrowest ring event although this may be coincidental as the high sulfate spike occurs at a recovery phase crest in the oak chronology .So what caused the other three ? Perhaps you may wish to consider the ‘less robust ‘ REE /cobalt index H6 ‘in phase ‘ peak dated 1700 – 1500 BC

15. ” Lars was kind enough to send me his entire data set which I analyzed myself ”

    ” I was not provided the radiocarbon depth profiles or their tephrochronology analysis to verify their chronology ”

    George Howard [ or whoever the manager is ] what do you make of his contradictions, evasions and omissions ? …Is he an impersonator ? ….As I was attempting to type the Gregory of Tours entries on this site lets just say I was experiencing annoying ‘scrambled’ interference .

16. God Bless them. An argument over whose science is better than another only for the answer to be they are all useless. Just a bunch of I think this because I think that probably causes this effect. It’s all junk science because there are no constants. A math equation with too many variables that are unknown therefore the answers are always maybe it equals this. All this dating has one major flaw-the chaos theory is applicable in all of them. Just start the article with maybe and end it with probably. For one thing don’t call anyone else out because you think your theory is better. The only way to improve your theory or argument is if you have accounts of two eye witnesses. The law of the Bible. Still pretty funny to read. Like school kids arguing over why their dad can kick the others ass.

17. Hi Stuart,

    You are indeed correct to question my identity, since this is the internet after all. I am not an imposter, and could be anyone, but for what it is worth I am who I say I am, and I am not a nefarious troll with a conspiracy against this site or the commenters on it. George should be able to confirm that if he reads this message, or you can contact him on the email address at the bottom of this link http://vgm.a23.myftpupload.com/about-george/.

    Forgive me for also not responding to your queries, since it is the Christmas period and while I had free time to respond to some things, I mainly wanted to spend time with my family, rather than be online, or finding and trawling through old research papers and data files. So if some things were rushed, missed out, glossed over, or not answered, I can only apologise for not having the time. If there are inconsistencies, please put it down to either poor recall of things that I looked at years ago, and not having the time to look at now, and/or not being able to give full attention to the post when I had a number of distractions within my house!

    You will also have to forgive me though when I mis-speak when i stated the term “entire data set”. What I meant by “entire” was the elemental data as a function of depth (that is around 70 elements from Lithium to Uranium using their chronological time-frame). Lars did not provide the the raw data that was used to construct his chronological time-frame, and so I take it as given, with the caveat that it is not precise due to the necessary assumptions and reliance upon radiocarbon dates. Indeed, I assume that the methodology of their chronological control is likely pretty sound given the limitations of the prior assumptions and uncertainty in radiocarbon measurements. So apologies if what I said was misleading. You are correct that he did not give me the entire data set (elements plus chronology control), but he did give me, what I presume is, the entire of his elemental data analysis, which is the “entire” dataset that I refereed to.

    The data that I was referring to (probably confusingly) regards the number of cosmic spherules etc (i.e 3 against a background of 2) is in Figure 5 of Abbott et al (2014) in this link file:///C:/Users/jonny/AppData/Local/Temp/SPE505-22_Final.pdf.

    For your question regarding the ice cores during the 1600’s BC. Yes there is indeed a tree ring downturn in Irish Oak between 1682 and 1678 BC, and our revised ice core chronology does not appear to link an eruption to it. However, not all eruptions deposit evidence in the Greenland Ice cap, and there has been debate over how well Mediterranean eruptions deposit horizons in Greenland Ice caps (viz. Vesuvius 79 AD and Thera). So, it could be that the growth change in Irish Oak around 1680 BC is the response a large eruption that did not deposit acid on the Greenland Ice (perhaps it was a southern hemisphere eruption, which effected global climate, but the acid was confined to the southern hemisphere. I have not seen any Antarctic ice core data to confirm or deny this).

    Now, you mention the Cobalt peak around this time, but the thing to bear in mind is that Cobalt can be found in volcanic dust, so its sole use as a cosmic marker should, ideally, not be used in isolation, which is why Franzen and Cropp used an index composed of REE. The Cobalt (and a few other elements) in the 17th century BC could come from the large volcanic eruptions in that century, and it would be difficult to know given the resolution that Franzen and Cropp were working with.

    Was the lower Irish Oak growth caused by a cosmic impact? Possibly, but then again trees being living things, they can just be affected by poor weather (and we are talking Ireland!) that has no extrinsic cause. What is interesting though is (and I did wonder this at teh time of looking at Franzen and Cropp’s data) is that the one of the possible dates fro the Kaali impact event near Estonia, was dated to be 1690-1510 BC, and I wondered if it could coincide with the peak in Franzen’s REE index around 1700 BC. The trouble is, the 1690-1510 BC date is not a unique date for the Kaali event, and another date exists for the event, 800-400 BC, which corresponds to another peak in the REE index around this time. It is an interesting proposition either way.

    Just to clarify some things though. You do seem to think that I am some sort of denier of the possibility of increased cosmic impacts in the past. This is by far from the truth. The very reason that I asked Franzen for his data was because I wanted to see if I could find strong evidence to support any impacts. Being a trained scientist I did not find any that I would consider strong (but being human that does not mean I am right), but I would consider some of the data to be interesting.

    Finally, with regards the 520s events that you mention. Again I have no issues with there being a cosmic impact at this time. There was a volcanic eruption around 522, which caused a climate shift, but it is too early for the events around 525. It has been awhile since I looked at cosmic events around 525 (so my mind is quite hazy on it), but i do recall there being an argument that the reported meteor shower of 525 (or 526) was mistaken and that it refers to the meteor shower in 530 (or 531). Apologies, I cannot recall the reference to this, but maybe I will find it in the next few weeks if I get time. All that being said, the Irish Annals, do have some quirky things occurring in the mid 520s, one of which is a cryptic reference to Saint Brigit (who may have been the Christianised of a Celtic fire goddess, and whose name can be translated as Fiery Dart). Saint Bridgit died around 524/5/6 depending upon which text you consult, but one text states that she died in 524 and that in 525 “The fierce battle of Luachair above, downwards. Brigit was seen, no empty vision.” Another set of Annals states she died in 523 and that in 524 “The battle of Luachair gained by Coirpre over the Uibh Neill, of which was said: The fierce battle of Luachair, over head, downwards, Brigid saw; no fruitless miracle.”

    So a Christianised fire goddess or “Fiery Dart” is appearing in the sky around the mid 520s. The Irish annals tend to be quite bereft of astronomical information (probably because either sky is usually cloudy on our island), so this would seem to be quite something of note. Was it a large fireball they reported? Was it an auroral display? A meteor shower? A comet? or a mundane thunder storm? I personally think it was astronomical rather than meteorological. I do think that there were a lot of things that were going on in the sky in the 6th century, but it is frustrating that there is a (what I consider to be) a lack of convincing (to me) data to back it up. It may well be that the 6th century was a time of increased cosmic events, but that perhaps they did not much of an effect upon global climate at this time. I say this because volcanic forcing modelling based upon the sulphur yield in ice cores in the 6th century, coupled with climate feedback mechanisms, and degree of solar irradiance agree with the degree of global cooling reconstructed from global tree rings from temperature sensitive tree species. This leaves little room for further extraterrestrial effects, but those effects could still be there given that there are always uncertainties within the modelling, but the wielders of Occam’s Razor would dismiss the requirement of such extraterrestrial components.

    Anyway, now that the Christmas period is over, life is returning to normal, so I do not know if I will have much time to respond further. Please do keep questioning my research though, In fact I encourage it. Science progresses through sceptical inquiry. I am more than happy to be wrong if it leads to a better understanding of the past (and indeed, I may well be wrong on a number of things!). But the important thing to remember is to also question the research that agrees with your own views. The physicist Richard Feynman said it best with regards one’s own research and viewpoints “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”

18. No Scott , there is no ‘argument over whose science is better than another ” as the scientific research is open to the public which means the “accounts of two eyewitnesses ” [ why the limit on contributing observers ? ] are of no relevance here and cannot improve the debate . It may be a good idea not to administer advice on argument construction if you believe its all [ useless ] junk science ..After all, what’s the point if that is your position ? I for one am not an accredited or published scientist ..Just an old tradesman with a crummy Bachelor of Arts degree ..Only the interpretations of the data and histories are disputed and I must reiterate he [ very uncharacteristic of the real Jonny McAneney. This has nothing to do with the assumed superiority of one theory vis a vis another ] has not returned to answer to his deceptive contradictions and evasions or the questions I raised in the last paragraph . I at least can admit if I am not up to date or mistaken . We also discussed historical chronicles . I am perfectly entitled, within the conventions of debate, to call another contributor out on perceived deceptions, errors and inconsistencies . Notice that after he was reminded of the lead pollution proxy as a chronological marker in the peat mire dataset he did not respond. If indeed he received Lar’s “entire dataset ” why did he later qualify that ” he was not provided the radiocarbon depth profiles or …tephrochronology analysis ” ? Was it an entire or a partial package ? . Not that I’m confident in your ability to rationally appraise both sides of the debate . If you are versed in the Bible [ unless your ” law of the Bible ” comment is a sneer ] , then review the Dead Sea cosmic airburst controversy dated 1700 – 1600 BC and the wider Middle Bronze Age destruction layers …The obliterated Tell el Hammam site consisted of mud wall ramparts not dissimilar to the Hyksos fortifications at Avaris in the Nile Delta . From whence did they come from and why did they leave their homelands ? Perhaps they were no longer habitable . It turns out the mysterious Hyksos – speculated to be of Canaanite or Arabian origin – over ran Egypt at the beginning of the Second Intermediate Period [ possibly documented in the Ipuwer Papyrus ] tentatively dated to 1650 BC until they were driven out a century later .The Hyksos or ‘Amu’ as they were also called, may be one and the same as the cruel Amalek of Biblical and Jewish scripture . These debates may be amusingly akin to a petty schoolyard quarrel to you Scott …For others they have fascinating implications for unresolved enigmas in the fields of paleo-ecology , archaeology , ancient history and even religious scriptures .

19. I never implied you were a ‘nefarious troll with a conspiracy against this site ” or a Holocene cosmic impact ‘denier’ . You are over-stepping yourself or rather , over compensating .Enough with the Stephen Lewandowsky school of conspiracist ideation junk psychology ….Its boring.

    ” So if some things were rushed , missed out , glossed over ..not answered “.

    .Once again you have not mentioned the Taurid Complex , the History of the Franks AD 580 – 590 entries ; the 16 : 1 elevation in cometary dust particles correction [ ” this leaves little room for further extraterrestrial effects “……” a lack of convincing data ..” ?] to your 3 : 2 ratio falsehood or the lead contaminant deposition record . There are three unexplained 17th C BC Irish oak downturns – not just one – and your St Brigid Irish mythic discourse is transparently a distraction. You would do well to take Richard Feynman’s adage closer to heart .
    Moreover , if the cobalt was volcanogenic we could expect the element to be mixed in with volcanic tephra and sulfate all the way through for at least 100 consecutive years of the 3700 – 3500 BC timespan [H6] . I’m sure Lars and Roger would have understood this …And the real
    ‘Jonny ‘ Instead , the cobalt surge is synchronously shaped with the REE peak in the graph thus denoting a common extraterrestrial origin and good chronological control . You come across as a dissembling impersonator. One more thing : if there is an AD 531 Bristlecone series frost ring it is not an “orphan ‘ .[ It is not listed in Table 1 ‘ Interval analysis between tie dates of volcanic acid in two ice cores …..and the dates of bristlecone pine frost rings ” Antiquity Vol 93 Issue 367 ,Feb 2019 ] There is a Law Dome sulfate signal corresponding to that date and 531 CE in the SP04C5 core. As you can now appreciate , I am not ‘fixated ‘ on cosmic impacts to the exclusion of volcanic eruptions or other mundane climate forces . I follow the evidence where it leads. I cannot say the same for you .

20. ” you mention the Cobalt peak around this time , but the thing to bear in mind is that Cobalt can be found in volcanic dust ,so its sole use as a cosmic marker should ideally not be used in isolation , which is why Franzen and Cropp used an index composed of REE ….the 17th century BC [cobalt ] could come from the large volcanic eruptions in that century and it would be difficult to know given the resolution that Franzen and Cropp were working with ”

    It was never my argument the cobalt vector series should be interpreted as a “cosmic marker …used in isolation ” In fact the cobalt index is charted in combination with the REE chronology …Its there in the graphs title : ” REE – index and Cobalt vector all mires 0 -7000 Cal BP ‘. And to reaffirm , the Cobalt concentrations climb , peak and fall congruently with the REE values over the course of 1000 years from 4000 – 3000 BP . There were doubtless multiple volcanic eruptions during the Bronze Age ,however a trained scientist would have realized the multi centennial correlation logically points to a common extraterrestrial dust source . Interestingly the Minoan Warm Period flourished in the centuries when the Co and REE values decline [ L5 ] after 1500 BC [ circa 1450 – 1200 ] . The Roman Optimum [ 100 BC – 200 AD ] is situated in another Co / REE low influx lull [ L6 ]
    Of interest too is an analysis of the element composition in one northern peat bog column from the 1908 Tunguska explosion epicenter ” published by Xie et al [ that showed ] concentrations of Pd , Ni , Co ,Ti , Y and REE in the event and lower layers are [higher ] than the background values for the upper layers …..eight times for Ni , ten times for Co……and fifteen times for REE respectively ” ….The Cobalt and REE abundances are coeval at a depth corresponding to 1908 when a comet chunk detonated over Siberia https://tunguska.tsc.ru/f/3598/MainPart/gaat108550.pdf

    As for your bizarre statements : ” I do think there were a lot of things going on in the sky in the 6th century but it is frustrating there is [ what I consider to be ] a lack of [ to me ] data to back it up ……This leaves little room for further extraterrestrial effects ”

    You are in denial of the evidence , esteeming your subjective opinion [ ” what I consider to be…”to me “] over objective evaluation and, ironically, you exemplify Richard Feynman’s maxim : “you must not fool yourself ,and you are the easiest person to fool ” . I listed seven incidences of meteor swarms, comet sightings and destructive bolides chronicled in Gregory of Tours History of the Franks within a decade. [ AD 580 – 590 ] not included in Mike Baillie’s or Clube
    and Napier’s published books, that you refuse to debate . There are others in the 570’s .The annals of one Frankish historian . Here is another record from China dated AD 588 : ” Red colored object ….fell with noise like thunder …burned several houses ” .Then there is the 16 times volume in cometary particles [ Sn Ni Fe and carbon spherules ] mixed with marine micro-fossils detected at the start of Abbott et al’s 10 year section ice core analysis . There is no absence of convincing data and documentation

21. Both of you are who you say you are!

22. Identities verified on the word of ” Anonymous “

23. Hi Stuart,

    This is a long post, so for yourself, and anyone else reading along, boil the kettle, make a cuppa, get comfortable and settle in.

    Before we get into the meat of it all, there is still doubt that I am not who I say I am, that I am impersonating myself. You have mentioned that you have visited my twitter page. If you care to visit it again (@JonnyMcAneney https://mobile.twitter.com/jonnymcaneney), you will see that I have put up a message highlighting that I have been replying to posts in this Blog article. Hopefully this will appease your concerns over who I really am. Now of course, you are free to go further into a rabbit hole and speculate that I am also impersonating Jonny McAneney in a twitter account, but I hope you do not. For the record and as far as I am aware, the identity of Jonny McAneney has only been impersonated once before, and that is when an account got hijacked and I appeared to have a passion for selling shoes to all my friends and contacts!

    First up I will address your statement about the orphan bristlecone pine frost ring in 531. You cite that the Antarctic ice cores of Law Dome and SP04 have sulphate at 531 (in actual fact the dates given by Plummer et al. (2012) (link here https://cp.copernicus.org/articles/8/1929/2012/) and Ferris et al. (2011) (Link here https://www.researchgate.net/publication/246802291_South_Pole_ice_core_record_of_explosive_volcanic_eruptions_in_the_First_and_Second_Millennia_AD_and_evidence_of_a_large_eruption_in_the_tropics_around_535_AD )) at 530.9-533.2 and 531 respectively.

    Plummer et al. categorically links this “531” sulphate layer to Ferris et al.’s 531 signal, as well as linking it to another Antarctic ice core (DML) acid layer acid in NGRIP at 542, as well as the NGRIP (Greenland ice core) acid signal dated to 533. Ferris had previously linked their 531 sulphate to the NGRIP 533 signal, and they also linked the DML 542 acid to their 531 acid. Sigl et al. (2013) (https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2012JD018603) also linked a sulphate signal dated to 531.2 in their WDC ice core to and acid layer dated to 532.5 in their NEEM ice core (which was constrained by the GICC05 timescale, which you will recall from above was constructed using the GRIP, NGRIP and DYE3 cores). So, the consensus amongst all the ice core workers prior to 2015 was that all these acid layers recorded the same low latitude large eruption. But, as shown by Baillie and McAneney (2015) (https://cp.copernicus.org/articles/11/105/2015/cp-11-105-2015.html), and confirmed by Sigl et al. (2015) (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279965759_Timing_and_climate_forcing_of_volcanic_eruptions_for_the_past_2500_years?_sg%5B0%5D=BU9emM5Yk-DqOeb4XaiiTe3S4m-0UFmCCic7-Do0It0t0RfKSUQ3KK8GsfMotMz_KXANWFk60t-Yl-pLB8w0wCSIW9SHPy7doS504Kr9.P1IfxR_5WQOxbS24G9JwMuOTRHVJFePfmPdrOam_ZBtEi7TnIfIZIfRcCxhFMa4cZW_s66JxUiqTOekVU825VA), there was an error in the Law Dome chronology (which I suspect was due to a bias in relying upon the GICC05 timescale), as well as SP04 and DML ice cores. All these acid signals are indeed of the same eruption, that being the eruption of AD 540. So, when you look in the correctly dated ice cores of Greenland and Antarctica, there is no sulphate around AD 531, and so the AD 531 frost ring does not appear to have a volcanic origin. It may well just be an unforced climate anomaly, since as Mike and I have stipulated many times in our papers, while frost rings are a good indicator of climate forcing, not all frost rings are of caused by eruptions, and not all eruptions cause frost rings. And, as some have argued, some eruptions may be large enough to cause climate forcing but be invisible within the ice cores due to inefficient transport of their acid to the polar regions (this has been a main argument for why we may not see the signal for Thera in the ice cores). The AD 531 frost ring stands out as being the only frost ring in the 6th century that appears not to have a volcanic origin, which makes one wonder what caused it, and the possibility that it could have a cosmogenic origin.

    I had not responded to your Gregory of Tours sub-discussion previously, because I simply did not have the time to do so, and was focusing upon other aspects of the discussion (ice cores etc), which had more in common to my original comment regarding the ice core chronology, and which I have the most “expertise” in. But let us look at Gregory now

    The first thing that I note is that the passages from History of the Franks that you have quoted in the previous posts are abridgements, the result of which appears to conflate the various reported phenomena into a single event, or that there is a causal link between them, when the reading of the full unabridged text makes it clear that many of the phenomena were not linked temporally. So, for clarity for other readers, and for the following discussion, are your abridged statements, numbered 1-7.

    Stuart Hamish abridgements follow:

    (1) ” In the fifth year of King Childeberts reign [ AD 580 ?] …..In Touraine ….a bright light was seen to traverse the sky and then disappear in the East . A sound of trees crashing to the ground was heard throughout the whole region …..it was audible over fifty miles and more ….Bordeaux was… shaken by an earthquake ……Huge rocks [cascaded ] down from the mountain peaks of the Pyrenees ,crushing …the local inhabitants and their cattle . Villages around Bordeaux were burned by a fire sent from heaven….The city of Orleans blazed with a great conflagration ……A most serious epidemic followed these prodigies ”

    (2) ” Some said that they saw the heavens aflame ….A wind from the south raged with such great violence that it knocked down forest trees ,destroyed houses .carried off fences and blew men off their feet and killed them . This wind devastated an area some mile or more across but no one ever discovered how far the damage continued ….The moon was darkened and a comet appeared in the sky . A serious epidemic followed among the common people “[ date uncertain . Just before AD 583 ]

    (3) ” In the seventh year of King Childeberts reign [ AD 582 ] ……..a comet appeared again , and the sky seemed particularly black where it passed across the heavens ……gleaming so bright and spreading wide its tail .From it there issued an enormous beam of light ,which from a distance looked like the great pall of smoke over a great conflagration ”

    (4) ” The sky was overcast and it was raining . Suddenly a great ball of fire fell from the sky and moved some considerable distance through the air .shining so brightly that visibility was as clear as high noon ” [ AD 583 ]

    (5) ” A great beacon traversed the heavens lighting up the land far and wide …….There was an earthquake in the district of Anger’s ” [ possibly AD 587 ]

    (6) ” This same year two islands in the sea were consumed by fire which fell from the sky . They burned for seven whole days ….they were completely destroyed ,together with the inhabitants and their flocks ….All were reduced to ash and the sea covered everything .Many maintained that all the portents which I have [ witnessed ] in ….October ,when the sky seemed to be on fire ,were really the reflection of this conflagration ” This appears to be a 580’s anecdotal record of a bolide and possible tsunami affecting offshore islands [ The Scilly Islands in the waters between England and France were inundated and one of the islands split around AD 500 This may or may not be relevant ]

    (7) ” so bright a light illumined a wide spread of lands in the middle of the night that you would have thought that it was high noon . On a number of occasions fiery globes were also seen in the night-time so that they seemed to light up the whole earth ” [ AD 589 /90 ]

    What now follows are the unabridged passages taken from History of the Franks, translated by Lewis Thorpe, Penguin Classics edition (1974). I have listed the book and “chapter” each passage is taken from, as well as the page number from the 1974 edition for ease of finding. I have numbered the passages in the abridged and unabridged versions but note for some of the unabridged I have sub-labelled some extra included sectionswith letters since they contain information that fleshes out the rest of the text, or gives the text further context. Below the unabridged passages I give my views, interpretations, and commentary upon the texts.

    Unabridged History of the Franks

    (1) Book V Ch 33 (page 295).

    “In the fifth year of King Childebert’s reign [AD 580] great floods devastated parts of Auvergne. The rain continued for twelve days and the Limagne was under such a depth of water that all sowing had to cease. The River Loire, the River Allier (which used to be called the Flavaris) and the mountain-streams which run into this latter were so swollen that they rose higher above the flood-level than ever before. Many cattle were drowned, the crops were ruined and buildings inundated. The River Rhone, at the spot where it meets the Saône, overflowed its banks and brought heavy loss to the inhabitants, undermining parts of the city walls of Lyons. When the rains stopped, the trees came out in leaf once more, although by now it was September. In Touraine this same year, one morning before the day had dawned, a bright light was seen to traverse the sky and then disappear in the East. A sound as of trees crashing to the ground was heard throughout the whole region, but it can hardly have been a tree for it was audible over fifty miles and more. In this same year again the city of Bordeaux was sadly shaken by an earthquake. The city walls were in great danger of collapsing. The entire populace was filled with the fear of death, for they imagined that they would be swallowed up with their city unless they fled. Many of them escaped to neighbouring townships. This terrible disaster followed them to the places where they had sought refuge and extended even into Spain, but there it was less serious. Huge rocks came cascading down from the mountain peaks of the Pyrenees, crushing in their wake the local inhabitants and their cattle. Villages around Bordeaux were burned by a fire sent from heaven, it took so swift a hold that homesteads and threshing-floors with the grain still spread out on them were reduced to ashes. There was no other apparent cause of this fire, and it must have come from God. The city of Orleans blazed with a great conflagration. Even the richer citizens lost their all, and if anyone managed to salvage anything from the flames it was immediately snatched away by the thieves who crowded around. Somewhere near Chartres blood poured forth when a loaf of bread was broken in two. At the same time the city of Bourges was scourged by a hailstorm.”

    (2) Book V Ch 41 (page 305-6)

    Ambassadors were despatched to King Guntram’s court from Mir, King of Galicia. As they passed through the neighbourhood of Poitiers their presence was announced to King Chilperic, who at that time ruled over this region. He ordered them to be seized and brought before him, and then he locked them up in Paris. At this time a wolf came out of the woods and made its way through one of the gates into the city of Poitiers. Thereupon all the gates were closed, and the wolf was cornered inside the city walls and killed. Some said that they saw the heavens aflame. At the point where the waters of the River Cher mingle with it, the River Loire was even higher than the previous year. A wind from the south raged with such great violence that it knocked down forest-trees, destroyed houses, carried off fences and blew men off their feet and killed them. This wind devastated an area some mile or more across, but no one ever discovered how far the damage continued. On a number of occasions, too, the cocks crowed at the beginning of the night. The moon was darkened and a comet appeared in the sky. A serious epidemic followed among the common people.

    (3) Book VI Ch 14 (page 345)

    In the seventh year of King Childebert’s reign [582] which was the twenty-first of both Chilperic and Guntram, there were torrential downpours in the month of January, with flashes of lightning and heavy claps of thunder. The trees suddenly burst into flower. The star which I have described as a comet appeared again, and the sky seemed particularly black where it passed across the heavens. It shone through the darkness as if it were at the bottom of a hole, gleaming so bright and spreading wide its tail. From it there issued an enormous beam of light, which from a distance looked like the great pall of smoke over a conflagration. It appeared in the western sky during the first hour of darkness. In the city of Soissons on Easter Sunday the whole sky seemed to catch fire. There appeared to be two centres of light, one of which was bigger than the other: but after an hour or two they joined together to become one single enormous beacon, and then they disappeared. In the Paris region real blood rained from a cloud, falling on the clothes of quite a number of people and so staining them with gore that they stripped them off in horror. This portent was observed in three different places in that city. In the Senlis area a man woke up one morning to find the whole of the inside of his house spattered with blood. This year the people suffered from a terrible epidemic; and great numbers of them were carried off by a whole series of malignant diseases, the main symptoms of which were boils and tumours. Quite a few of those who took precautions managed to escape. We learned that a disease of the groin was very prevalent in Narbonne this same year, and that, once a man was attacked by it, it was all up with him.

    (4) Book VI Ch 42 (page 345)

    In the city of Tours on 31 January [583] in the eighth year of the reign of King Childebert, this day being Sunday, the bell had just rung for matins. The people had got up and were on their way to church. The sky was overcast and it was raining. Suddenly a great ball of fire fell from the sky and moved some considerable distance through the air, shining so brightly that visibility was as clear as at high noon. Then it disappeared once more behind a cloud and darkness fell again. The rivers rose much higher than usual. In the Paris region the River Seine and the River Marne were so flooded that many boats were wrecked between the city and Saint Lawrence’s church.

    (5) Book VII Ch 11 (page 395)

    All this happened in the tenth month of the year [584]. New shoots appeared on the vine-stocks, misshapen grapes formed and the trees blossomed a second time. A great beacon traversed the heavens, lighting up the land far and wide some time before the day dawned. Rays of light shone in the sky, and in the north a column of fire was seen to hang from on high for a space of two hours, with an immense star perched on top of it There was an earthquake in the district of Angers and many other portents appeared. In my opinion all this announced the coming death of Gundovald.

    (6) (a) Book VIII Ch 8 (page 439)

    [585] Portents appeared. Rays of light were seen in the northern sky, although, indeed, this happens often. A flash of lightning was observed to cross the heavens. Flowers blossomed on the trees. It was the fifth month of the year.

    (b) Book VIII Ch 11 (page 449)

    While I was staying in Carignan, I twice during the night saw portents in the sky. These were rays of light towards the north, shining so brightly that I had never seen anything like them before: the clouds were blood-red on both sides, to the east and to the west. On a third night these rays appeared again, at about seven or eight o’clock. As I gazed in wonder at them, others like them began to shine from all four quarters of the earth, so that as I watched they filled the entire sky. A cloud gleamed bright in the middle of the heavens, and these rays were all focused on it, as if it were a pavilion the coloured stripes of which were broad at the bottom but became narrower as they rose, meeting in a hood at the top. In between the rays of light there were other clouds flashing vividly as if they were being struck by lightning. This extraordinary phenomenon filled me with foreboding, for it was clear that some disaster was about to be sent from heaven.

    (c) Book VIII Ch 24 (page 455)

    This same year two islands in the sea were consumed by fire which fell from the sky. They burned for seven whole days, so that they were completely destroyed, together with the inhabitants and their flocks. Those who sought refuge in the sea and hurled themselves headlong into the deep died an even worse death in the water into which they had thrown themselves, while those on land who did not die immediately were consumed by fire. All were reduced to ash and the sea covered everything. Many maintained that all the portents which I have said earlier that I saw in the month of October, when the sky seemed to be on fire, were really the reflection of this conflagration.

    (7) Book X Ch 23 (page 581)

    In the same year [590] so bright a light illumined a wide spread of lands in the middle of the night that you would have thought that it was high noon. On a number of occasions fiery globes were also seen traversing the sky in the night-time, so that they seemed to light up the whole earth.

    ALSO from further in this chapter we read

    There was a great earthquake very early in the morning on Wednesday, 14 June, just as the day began to dawn. There was an eclipse of the sun in the middle of October. The sun’s rays were so diminished that it gave no more light than the horned moon when five days old.

    Discussion of the above passages follows below.

    Let’s now look at each of these passages in turn. What follows is my discussion and interpretation of the phenomena reported by Gregory of Tours. I also look at if there are any temporal clues that could link any of these phenomena to any known meteor showers, and consider specifically the Taurid complex, since it is the complex that may have been of significant hazard during the 5th and 6th centuries AD, as noted by Clube, Napier, Asher and Steel etc.

    (1) It is clear from the reading that the bright light and tree-crashing noise is not associated with the earthquake, as Gregory states that it was in the same year, not explicitly at the same time. The same goes for the Pyrenees rock fall. Similarly, the heavenly fire around the villages of Bordeaux also appears to be separate from each of these events. It is not clear if the Orleans blaze should be associated with the same heavenly fire of the Bordeaux.

    The trouble comes down to temporal control. We are not told when in the year any of these events took place, and so it is a large leap to lump them all as occurring at the same time. Yes, we are told the month in which the torrential rains stopped (September), but this does not mean that the prodigies that follow in the text occurred AFTER September, we are just told that they occurred in the SAME YEAR.

    But, since these posts are focused upon cosmic events, let us look at those events that may be cosmic. There are two events that have strong possibilities, the Touraine “fireball”, and the Bordeaux fires (we cannot include the Orleans fire since there is no mention of a cause). Of the two, I would bet that the Touraine fireball is a good account of a bolide detonating in the air. I would be more sceptical of the heavenly fires being cosmogenic. I have seen other accounts of heavenly fire in historical texts, and in some of them it could be interpreted as lighting. Gregory says that a cause of the fires is unknown, and so must have been sent by God, which is intriguing, but ignorance, or a lack of information is not a good reason to invoke a cosmic origin.

    Are these events associated with the Taurid complex? We just don’t know from the text, as the time of year is not given, so we do not know if they have occurred at the time of any meteor shower. So, I would say at least one of them was cosmic (the Touraine fireball), but the other, there is not enough information to conclude otherwise. I have passed over the hail shower, since, again, we have no other clues as to whether it was just a hailstorm, or if it was a meteoric event. We are told that the hailstorm occurred in Bourges, and there is some information that it occurred at the same time as the blood coming from a loaf, which is mentioned directly after the Orleans conflagration. We cannot say whether the blood loaf was supposedly contemporaneous with the conflagration, since we do not have enough information, but if it is, then the Bourge Hailstorm should be contemporaneous to the Orleans conflagration, and hailstorms can occur within large thunderstorm cells (the distance between Orleans and Brouge is around 60 miles). If this is the case, then perhaps the Bordeaux fires could also be linked into a large storm system at the same time. This is all fun speculation though, since as I have pointed out, there is not enough temporal information to legitimately tie any of the events together, other than they occurred in the same year, and that possibly, due to the placement within the text, an assumption of the order that the events occurred in.

    (2) The date of this passage is most likely 582. There were two total lunar eclipses visible from France in 582 (March and September), and a comet there was a comet recorded in January 582 (see passage 3 for more detail on the comet). The only prodigy of cosmic origin that I see is the report that the heavens were aflame. Note that Gregory says, “some said they seen…”, implying Gregory did not see this himself, so it is a second-hand account at best. Often the reports of the heavens being aflame is taken as being a report of aurora, which often appear red at lower latitudes. It may be that perhaps this is a garbled report of the observed comet, but I would lean more into the aurora interpretation. Then we have the destructive wind. I do not see this as cosmic in origin, and there is nothing to link it to a cosmic origin. The reported destruction does seem to be localised, but there are meteorological phenomena that can cause locally destructive winds, tornadoes for one, downbursts another, or even a so-called Sting Jet. The point is, we do not need a cosmic event to create a localised destructive wind. Again though, the passage is bereft of any chronological clues to tell us what time of year these events occurred, so again, even if they did have their origins with the Taurid complex, we cannot with any degree of certainly positively connect them to the Taurid complex, based upon the information provided in the text.

    (3) Now this passage has some chronological context. The year these events portend to is 582, the same as above, and it is the year that a comet appeared in January. This comet was first noticed by the Chinese on the 15th or 20th January (depending upon if you go with the Ch’en shu, or the Sui shu texts. The latter text states that the comet was first seen in the Southwest and is probably an evening observation. This conforms well to Gregory’s statement that the comet was seen in the west at the first hour of night, especially with the placement of it within his text shortly after the downpours of January.

    We have no further information of this comet, and so we cannot say whether it was particularly close to the earth at the time of observation, or whether it may actually have been approaching perihelion point near to the sun. Given the time it was observed, my guess would be that it was close to the sun in its orbit, but as mentioned, there is no evidence to support this guess, or any other guess. Also, again, there has not been enough information to compute an orbit for this comet, so we cannot link it to the Taurid complex, nor do we know if it crossed the orbital corridor of the Earth at any time.

    Let us now move on to the skies being ablaze. This is given as occurring on Easter Sunday of that year (this would have been 29th March in 582 (Julian calendar that was being used at that time, but 31st March in our Gregorian calendar). This may well be the same event as reported in the previous passage, but we cannot be sure. The description does not sound meteoric, but it is more like Aurora display. Even if it was meteoric, we cannot link it with certainty to the Taurid complex. Allowing for precession of the Taurid stream, and the precession of equinoxes (which amounts to around 22 days per millennium in total), then we would expect the peaks of the meteor showers for the four branches of the Taurid complex to occur Mid-to-late May and Late-September to Mid-October in the late 6th century. So, the sky being ablaze is not likely associated with a Taurid complex meteor shower, it occurring two months BEFORE the daytime Taurid showers. Certainly, we cannot link the comet of January with sky being ablaze at the end of March.

    (4) This is a good passage. We are given a date and time for the event of a ball of fire falling from the sky. This passage, I think, is indeed a record of another bolide event. However, given the date, Sunday 31st January, (the 31st January 583 was a Sunday) it is not likely associated with the Taurids. However, we have to be cautious, as we are also told that at the time of observation that it was raining and overcast, so we cannot 100% discount that what they saw was a lightning bolt moving from one cloud to another. I think this latter interpretation unlikely though. If it was a bolide (and I do think it is), then given that the conditions are described as overcast and raining (and the base of rain clouds are around 2-3 km altitude), then this suggests that the bolide penetrated quite deep into the atmosphere. Also, given that there were no reports of thunder (another reason I don’t think it was lightning) or noise, I doubt it was a large object or airburst. Likely it was small and disappeared when the object entered dark flight stage, which was interpreted by the witnesses as it passing into another cloud.

    (5) The portents of this passage, we are told, all occurred in the 10th month of 582. At this time the year began in March, and so the tenth month is December, which again means we cannot link any of it with Taurid showers. Again, we have what is likely a description of an aurora in the northern sky. The column of fire does seem odd, and of course we would immediately consider a comet to explain it, but no comet was recorded for 584. What we could have is perhaps an early record for the newly recognised phenomena known as STEVE, or perhaps an auroral arc. The star on top is admittedly odd, but interesting. But given that the phenomenon is meant to have lasted two hours, it is unlikely to be a bolide.

    (6) A) Again, reports that are likely an aurora, possibly in the 5th month (i.e. July), in the year 585.

    B) This is an interesting passage, since Gregory observed this himself in the month of October (as suggested by passage 6C below). The observation was in Carigan, which is on the River Chiers in Ardennes, near Belgium. The observation of the lights where to the North, again suggesting red aurorae. It doesn’t sound particularly meteoric. One could perhaps suggest there may have been a comet amongst it all, but this being the year 585, there are no records of a comet in that year.

    C) We have here a report of two islands being destroyed by fire from the sky. Gregory was told of this, and he did not witness it himself, though some individuals tell him that the lights in the sky that he seen in October (those in 6B above), was the reflection of the islands being on fire. The implication then is the islands burned in October of 585, but this may not be true. What caused them to burn though? The reports say that fire fell from the sky. Was this a meteor, or was it lightning? And what two islands? Is the covering by the sea a tsunami, or a storm surge?

    It is a difficult passage to unpack. The clue that it was in October could potentially link it to the Taurid meteor showers. However, I do think it quite a leap to conclude that the islands were destroyed by impact phenomena.

    Here we have a contradiction though. The report says that the islands burned for seven days. If they were ignited by an impact event, which also caused a tsunami, and were then submerged by a tsunami, how did they remain burning for seven days? Did the tsunami occur seven days after the ignition, at which point we have to question how an impact could cause a tsunami a week later, unless it was another impact? We are now complicating the issue further and moving goal posts to support an impact scenario.

    However, in the Life of Saint Columba (written in the 7th century) we have the following “ANOTHER time also, Lugbe, of the tribe Mocumin, of whom I spoke already, came to the saint one day after the grinding of the corn, but the saint’s countenance shone with such wonderful brilliancy that he could not look upon it, and quickly fled in great terror. The saint gently clapped his hands and called him back; then on his return the saint asked him why he fled so quickly. ‘I fled,’ he replied, ‘because I was very much alarmed.’ Then becoming more confident, after a while, he ventured to ask the saint, ‘Hath any awful vision been shown to thee just now?’ The saint answered, ‘A very fearful vengeance hath just now been exacted in a distant corner of the world.’ ‘What vengeance?’ says the youth, ‘and where hath it taken place?’ The saint then addressed him thus: ‘A sulphurous fire hath been poured down from heaven this moment on a city which is subject to Rome, and within the Italian territory, and about three thousand men, besides women and children, have perished. Before the end of this year Gallican sailors shall come here from the provinces of Gaul and tell thee these same things.’ His words proved true in a few months; for the same Lugbe, happening to accompany the saint to the Head of the land (Kintyre), inquired at the captain and crew of a bark that had just arrived, and received from them all the news regarding the city and its inhabitants, exactly as it was foretold by the illustrious man.”

    Saint Columba died around 593, and so one wonders if his “vision” is a garbled version of events that were reported to Gregory? You may want to check out Baillie and McCafferty’s “The Celtic Gods” for the cometary and impact motifs associated the life and deeds of Columba (or Columbcille to give him his Irish name) and his assistant Lugbe (AKA the Celtic god Lugh). Italy has some volcanic areas and islands, so perhaps it was merely fire from that. Or perhaps there was indeed an impact event around this time. Unfortunately, both scenarios are speculative based upon Gregory’s text.

    (7) The year of these events is 590, as Gregory provides information of a solar eclipse, which would have been the annular eclipse of 4th October 590.

    Again, the account of a bright light illuminating the land in the middle of the night could be aurora. I suppose that you could attribute it to noctilucent clouds, and/or similar to the effects after the Tunguska event (I say similar because phenomena similar to noctilucent clouds had been recorded over parts of Europe and Russian from 27th June 1908, but became exceptional and more widespread after the 30th June Tunguska event (see The Tunguska Mystery, Vladimir Rubtsov (2009), p15)). There is no temporal information associated with Gregory’s account. There is no information on whether it was one night, or multiple nights, contiguous or otherwise. I would consider it a bit of a leap to conclude that it was from an impact event, though it is not impossible that there was an impact somewhere distant from the observation. Its just that we do not have any other clues as to what caused the phenomenon/phenomena.

    What about the fiery globes seen at night traversing the sky? This could well be meteors or larger bolides. Can we associate this with the bright night(s). Not really, since again no temporal information is provided allowing us to positively link the two phenomena. If the bright nights are caused by the fiery globes, we do not have enough information to identify a link. The information provided does not even provide an unambiguous identification on whether the fiery globes all occurred on the same night, where clustered together over subsequent nights, or if they were seen on a number of nights across the year. In fact, we are not even provided information upon how many globes were seen, just the vague “on a number of occasions”. In my view this expression relates to three or more events spread across the year. I can’t prove that of course, but it is how I interpret it.

    If we assume that the above phenomena of bright night and fiery globes are linked, and of meteoric origin, can we link it to the Taurid complex, or any other meteor shower? Again, we cannot, because there is no information on the time of year these phenomena occurred. The fiery globes could be sporadics, or they could be part of a meteor complex, possibly the Taurids, which are known for producing much brighter, slow moving fireballs than other meteor showers.

    So, where has this left us? We have a record of one comet, of which we have no orbital information to even know if it was a near earth object or not, or even if the earth passed through or near to its orbital path to encounter its debris.

    We have some interesting possibilities for fireballs, one of which is likely to have been an airburst event. But again, we cannot tie these events to any meteor shower complex.

    We have some accounts that I consider to be strong aurorae candidates.

    We have some reports of fire from heaven, but again, one cannot assume that there are meteoric in origin, but they are interesting accounts. One fire from heaven account (with two islands being destroyed), occurs in October, which could be during the night-time Taurid meteor showers, so there could be a tenuous link, but without any other information it can only be weak speculation.

    So, for me personally, when you look at the unabridged accounts, one cannot conclude with any certainty that what we are seeing is a period of increased activity from the Taurid Complex, of any other meteor stream. Note that doesn’t mean that there was not increased activity in the Taurids etc, rather the History of the Franks does not provide sufficient information to make this conclusion.

    Now, after that long excursion, and if anyone has survived this long and are still reading, I will turn the attention to the debate of Abbott et al. and their conclusions of cosmic spherules in the GISP2 ice core. Stuart, you seem to think I am being evasive over the “16 times increase over background of the volume of cosmic particles”, and my “erroneous statement” of 3 cosmic particles over a background of two. It has not been evasiveness, but rather limitation on my time to address everything that has so far been brought up.

    Let us be clear about something. In 2014 Abbott et al. published two articles in the same volume of the Geological Society of America Special Paper 505. One was called “Calendar year dating of the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 (GISP2) ice core from the early sixth century using historical, ion, and particulate data” henceforth referred to as Abbott et al. (2014a) and can we can be obtained on this link https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285825885_Calendar-year_dating_of_the_Greenland_Ice_Sheet_Project_2_GISP2_ice_core_from_the_early_sixth_century_using_historical_ion_and_particulate_data. The second one is titled “What Caused Terrestrial Dust Loading and Climate Downturns Between 533 and 540 A.D.?” hence forth Abbott et. al. (2014b) and obtained here https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266375665_What_Caused_Terrestrial_Dust_Loading_and_Climate_Downturns_Between_533_and_540_AD. I label then 2014a and 2014b in the order that they appear in that journal volume.

    The 2014a article is the one in which they attempt accurately (re)date the GISP2 ice core. Only looking at 10 layers of ice, they thought they had identified a signal from continental dust, and assumed that it was linked to two historically recorded dust storms in China. They thus concluded that the published GISP2 ice core dates were too young by 2 years and that they should be moved back by two years to make it calendrically correct. We now know that the originally published dates for this section of the GISP2 core are 8 years too young, and so Abbott et al. (2014a), did not move the core back far enough, it requiring a further 6 year correction. This means that 10 years that they looked at was from around 527-536, when they thought they had 533-542.

    Now if you look in Abbott et al. (2014a), you will find Figure 5, which details (and I quote from the figure caption) “numbers of Ni-rich fragments and cosmic spherules versus time.” You will also see that the maximum number of particles reported in one annual layer is 3, dated to around 537 in their mistaken time scale (around 531 in true timescale). They report in this graph 5 annual layers in which they have 2 particles, and 4 annual layers in which they have 1 particle. In 10 annual layers they report a total of 17 cosmic particles, or an average of 1.7 per year, which has a standard deviation of 0.675. Therefore, based on a small data set of n=10 of small sample size (more on this later), and if we assume that this is representative of the full core that we would, on average find 1.7 +/- 0.675 cosmic particles in anyone year, and hence the n=3 result of their 537 layer stands out as an “excess”, it being almost 2 standard deviations above the mean.

    Now in their second paper of that journal volume (2014b), they use their timescale and examine the “cosmic dust in more detail”. While I have some experience with EDS analysis, I have little experience in cosmic dust morphology, and so I cannot argue for or against their conclusion that the material that they found in the ice core layers are of cosmic origin. For those who do not know, EDS is Electron Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy, and it works by firing electrons at the inner electron shells of atoms. This causes some of the inner core electrons of the atom to be ejected, and their space filled up by electrons from the outer shells, causing the emission of X-rays of with discrete characteristic X-ray energies that depend upon the series of electron transitions between different shells. As such, each atom will have its own “fingerprint” in emitted X-rays, allowing for the identification of what species of atom are within a material.

    Abbott et al.’s EDS analysis and peak fitting (Figure 2 in Abbott et al. (2014b)) does appear to be very good, but while they say the peak fitting of Xenon and Iodine was needed (and thus hinting at a cosmic origin), they do not report on the exclusion of other elements that have the potential to produce peaks in that portion of the spectra. If we look at the spectra between 3.0 and 4.2 keV, we can identify the strongest transition peaks in Tin (Sn). These peaks are from the L series of x-ray transitions, and are from low to high energy l, alpha_2, alpha_1, beta_1, beta_2, and gamma_1 with energies of 3.045, 3.437, 3.444, 3.663, 3.905, 4.131 keV respectively and the L_edge being at 4.157 keV. The energies peaks of alpha_1 and alpha_2 are too close together, and are individually too broad, to resolve as two separate peaks. (all transition energies taken from Zschornack “Handbook of X-ray Data”, Springer-Verlag 2007)

    For modelling purposes Abbott et al. throw in Iodine and Xenon, which have L transition energies of: Iodine alpha_2 = 3.926 and alpha_1 = 3.937 keV (again too close to resolve as two separate peaks), and Xenon alpha_2 = 4.097 and alpha_1 = 4.110 keV (again too close to resolve as separate peaks).

    However, another element, Antimony, has L series x-ray transitions in this same spectral region. It’s transition energies, alpha_2, alpha_1, beta_1 and beta_2 are 3.595, 3.604, 3.844 and 4.101 keV respectively. You can clearly see that the Antimony alpha transitions would be masked by the Tin beta_1 transition, and the Antimony beta_1 transition would be masked by the tin Beta_2 transition, particularly if the was a much lower abundance of Antimony than Tin in the admixture. However, this Beta_1 transition in Antimony has a similar energy to the alpha Transitions of Iodine, AND Antimony’s Beta_2 transition has a similar energy to Xenon’s alpha transitions. In Antimony should have been considered as a variable for modelling purposes, and, assuming that they Abbott et al. did consider it as a possibility, and did model it, what its fit parameters would be compared to including Iodine and Xenon.

    Now the reason to bring Antimony into the argument is not just to give an alternative potential variable for modelling the XDS spectra, but also to provide a potential alternative hypothesis. Antimony, like Tin is found naturally in the Earth’s crust. Although both are relatively rare elements, there is a history of them both being mine before and during Late Antiquity, for metallurgical use. Tin for example was used to make Bronze. However, up to, and after the fall of Rome, pewter was widely used, and pewter is an alloy of Tin and Antimony (with around 85-99% Tin and 5-10% Antimony, with a few other elements mixed in in varying percentages). The reason to bring this up is because ice core workers have found evidence over the past 3000 years of lead pollution in arctic ice cores (taken from Greenland and Siberia), which can be linked to periods of increased silver smithing across the European continent (see for example McConnell et al. (2019) https://www.pnas.org/content/116/30/14910). If lead from metallurgy can be transported to the Greenland ice cap, then why not Tin and Antimony? So, one could hypothesis that perhaps the grains that Abbott et al. have identified as cosmic, may actually be a signal of Tin and Antimony smelting/processing (The tin and Antimony being embedded in a matrix of carbon (i.e. charcoal soot from the smelting process?)). One could also speculate that the iron rich particles reported in Abbott et al. (2014a) may also have a human metallurgy origin.

    Whether this terrestrial hypothesis is correct or not, I cannot say, but science progresses by the proposal and testing of alternate hypotheses. However, as mentioned above, I am more experienced with the physics of EDS and atomic transitions than identifying the morphology of grains (terrestrial or cosmic), and so I do concede that Abbott et al. could be correct with their identification of the grains having a cosmic origin.

    The question is though, if the grains are indeed cosmic, is the abundance of them found in the GISP2 ice core exceptional? Abbott et al. (2014b) report a large volume of dust particles in a layer that they date to 533 (which should be corrected to 527). This drops significantly to a “background” level a couple of years later, followed by another “spike” around 536/7 (really 530/1), before it drops again to “background”. They cannot distinguish between the scenario of one dust loading event, with subsequent fall out and settling over time, or multiple inputs of dust over the subsequent years. Either way, they conclude, from their limited data set of 10 years, that dust loading event is an exceptional event. How do they know this when they have not examined any other part of the core? Is this conclusion justified? They have only looked at 10 years worth of ice, and so one could ask what is the volume of cosmic dust loading as measured in the ice core over the preceding 100, 200, or 500 years? Do we know for sure that the 10 years that they examined are, or are not representative of the rest of the core’s annual layers? How do we know, for example, that the large volume of dust particles at the beginning of the 10-year sample is actually an excess volume? Could it be that it is more representative of the background level through the whole core, and that what we are seeing is an anomalous reduction in dust particles in the remaining 9 years of the core sample?

    Picture the following analogy. A person is interested in the frequency of daily public transport passing down a main road in a particular area over the course of a year. Their funding is limited, and they have only time to monitor the traffic over ten consecutive days. The 10 days that they select just so happens to be begin a day or two before the Christmas (since this is an interesting time) and extends through the Christmas holidays and the New Year holidays. They note that at the start of the survey that there are a lot of buses, but that over the next number of days over the Christmas period and extending to New Year, that the number of buses on the road has significantly decreased. If they did not know that the bus companies run special, reduced holiday timetables in the Christmas period, then the researcher could conclude, from their lack of information and small sample size, that the normal frequency of public transport occurred in during the holiday period, and that something exceptional must have occurred at the start of their survey, when in fact it is the other way around. If the individual had extended their observing window to 100 or 200 consecutive days around the Christmas period, then they would be able to ascertain the true background frequency of buses.

    Ok, that is a contrary scenario I admit, but it serves to highlight the fact that Abbott et al., having not examined the previous centuries of the core, does not have a true “cosmic particle” background to compare their 10-year section of ice core to (which, to be fair, they cannot be blamed for, given that funding may have been limited, and they may have had limited access to portions of the GISP2 ice core, and so decided to concentrate upon the core that they thought would be most interesting (i.e. the part that they thought covered the 536 dust veil event)). So, to make ANY justifiable conclusion upon what would consist of baseline or background dust counts, further information is required. After all, the apparent excess of cosmic particles at the beginning of the 10-year sample in Abbott et al. (2014b) may just be the tip of the iceberg, and there may have been a huge cosmic event in the years prior to it, and we are only seeing the tail end of the fall out. Again, the point is without further core investigation, we simply cannot make strong conclusions, one way or the other. There would also be the issue of scientific replication. I would like to know if the observations of Abbott et al. (2014b) would be replicated coeval ice layers from other Greenland ice cores, in particular the GRIP ice core, which was drilled around 30 kilometres from GISP2. That would be an interesting follow up study. I suspect though that Abbott et al. being led by an American institute, had easier access to the American derived GISP2 core, than obtaining samples from cores obtained by the Europeans. Ice cores are expensive to obtain, and are a limited resource, and so it takes a lot of hoops to jump through, to gain access to physical ice samples for analysis, and I don’t think most ice core workers are enamoured with what they may consider the waste good ice core samples “wild-goose chases” looking for cosmic impact events. Personally, I think that looking for impact markers in ice cores is important, but I can understand the reluctance for the ice core workers with their limited ice resource.

    Finally, let us now turn to the presence of marine diatoms in the GISP2 core. This is an interesting observation. It is interesting because they have been found in a layer that Abbott et al. date to 536, which would in fact be around 530, this layer being close to the “spike” in volume of cosmic particles. Abbott et al. postulate that the diatoms were ejected from their marine environment by an impact, which, if we take Abbott et. al’s interpretation of the data at face value, is a reasonable postulate. However, if the particles are not cosmic, then the diatoms must have got there by a different mechanism. If we are allowed to propose events that are relatively rare (such as a cosmic impact), then we can also propose other rare events. What about a large undersea eruption, that was of sufficient magnitude to inject sea water (either in eruptive force or temperature to evaporate a large amounts of water), and thus diatoms, into the atmosphere, to be carried, stratospherically, or tropospherically to the Greenland ice cap. Such an event could also deposit sea floor sediment onto the ice cap. Furthermore, the sea floor sediment is also a repository for cosmic dust. Perhaps an under-sea eruption ejected, this cosmic material into the atmosphere too.

    The purpose of the above scenario is not to try to disprove the possibility of a cosmic impact, but rather to illustrate that another scenario could be used to explain the presence of the marine diatoms. And again, one must ask whether the presence of diatoms is replicated in coeval ice from the GRIP core, or indeed, another core not so close to GISP2, like the more Northerly NGRIP or NEEM, or even the more southerly DYE3 core.

    But this brings us back to the 531 Bristlecone pine frost ring event. It is extremely interesting that the diatoms in the GISP2 core appear in a layer that should be dated to around 530 (possibly 531). It is also interesting that if Abbott et al. are correct in their interpretation of the dust being of cosmic origin that they obtain a “spike” in particle volume around this time too. It would be nice to see elevation of the recorded Sodium and Chlorine chemical signals (arguably signatures of sea salt) in GISP2 ice layers coeval with the diatoms and particulates but alas, no elevation of these elements is observed.

    The point of all the above discussion of the two papers by Abbott et al. is not to merely dismiss their interpretation of their data out of hand, but rather to think critically about what the data might actually be telling us. I have proposed other possibilities, which might explain the data. I have no idea they will be correct. Indeed, they may well be wrong, but in proving that they are wrong, we move closer to finding what the true story is, be that extra-terrestrial or not. I do not think that Abbott et al. have shown unequivocally that their data is cosmic in origin. I think there is more work that needs done to strengthen their conclusions, and chronology is just one aspect of this. When things happen is just as important as what things happen (see for example my opening post regarding why we cannot link the “1014-Ammonium” spike to the 1014 North Sea Flood http://vgm.a23.myftpupload.com/oldie-goodie-carolina-coast-uk-catastrophically-inundated-tsunami-circa-1000-ad/#comment-70826). Using incorrect ice core dates for anomalies that can interpreted as having a cosmogenic origin is an issue that I have seen a number of times. Indeed, with the use of a correct chronology things can become even more interesting. For example, as noted above, instead of using the published timescale for GISP2, or indeed the timescale used by Abbott et al., the correct and more accurate timescale aligns the “cosmic signal” seen by Abbott et al. in GISP2 with a 531 frost ring event, AND the perihelion passage of Comet Halley in 530 (during a period in which its node intersected the Earth’s orbit), which, when you think about it actually aligns with a postulate that Abbott et al. made regarding the effects of Comet Halley’s passage that year. Abbott et al. may have been right, but for the wrong reason. It also allows us to then to ask, if Abbott et al. are correct in their EDS modelling and grain morphology analysis, what may have happened in, or before AD 527?

    As I write this last paragraph, readers who have made it this far may be left scratching their heads thinking that I have given mixed messages about what I think, or who’s side I am on. Truth be told, I probably have, because I am not invested in this one way or the other and take no sides. I do not need either an extra-terrestrial interpretation, or a terrestrial interpretation to be right, and it matters little to me which is correct. I look at it all with an open but critical mind, within the certain provisos that several things cannot be changed (such as tree ring chronologies, the pretty robust redating of the ice core chronologies etc). What matters to me is that one day we gain an unequivocal understanding of past events, whatever the actual cause of those events may be. And here I leave it. As mentioned before, I do not have a lot of free time, and so I will likely not be able to respond further, but that does not mean that others cannot debate/reinforce/deconstruct/critique/criticise what I have provided above, and they should absolutely do so.

24. ” And here I leave it “…….

    Leaving the debate with so much unanswered again ? Aside from your peculiar delays in responding to subject matter upon request that have nothing to do with time constraints, you have not yet responded to the lead contaminant deposition proxy Franzen and Cropp cited as a chronological marker in their peat mire analysis . Your belated discussion of the 3 millennia lead pollution record in the ice cores [ not peat mires ] is a diversion . Nor the extraordinary 1000 year climb – peak – fall – synchrony in the REE and Cobalt concentration values from 4000 – 3000 BP that certify the cobalt is not volcanogenic but emanated from the same extraterrestrial source as the Rare Earth Element series . You know the indices are not isolated as their is no continuous sulfate or tephra signal mixed in as one would expect if the cobalt is of volcanic origin. This is further corroborated by the elevated Co and REE concentrations observed in the Tunguska explosion epicenter northern peat bog study .

    You previously claimed Lar’s sent you his entire dataset only for you to confusingly concede that you had not received the data in entirety . I should point out that once again you have contradicted your own arguments illustrated in the following two passages of your extensive commentary :

    ” Finally , let us now turn to the presence of marine diatoms in the GISP2 core …..they have been found in a layer that Abbott et al date to 536 which would in fact be around 530 ,this layer being close to the spike in volume of cosmic particles…….if the particles are not cosmic ,then the diatoms must have got there by a different mechanism …we can also propose other rare events . What about a large undersea eruption ..of sufficient magnitude to inject sea water …and thus diatoms into the atmosphere , to be carried…to the Greenland ice cap ” ……How can this AD 530 /31 underwater eruption proposition have any plausibility when in fact you dismissed any evidence of a volcano as the cause of the 531 bristlecone frost ring ?

    ” So when you look in the correctly dated ice cores of Greenland and Antarctica , there is no sulphate around AD 531 and so the AD 531 frost ring does not appear to have a volcanic origin ”

    Taken together with the Byzantine chroniclers descriptions of ‘dancing stars ‘ and ‘something coming on us from the stars” the Sn , Fe Ni , spherule and marine micro fossil assemblage is almost certainly cosmogenic . As far as I am aware , Abbott and her colleagues have not retracted an aspect of their 2014 study that determined the cometary dust volume at the start of their 10 year analysis peaked at 16 times the level of residue detected three years later . You have not disproven this result either .

    ” Again the account of a bright light illuminating the land in the middle of the night could be aurora . I suppose that you could attribute it to noctilucent clouds…….There is no information on whether it was one night or multiple nights contiguous or otherwise . I would consider it a bit of a leap to conclude that it was from an impact event , though it is not impossible that there was an impact somewhere distant from the observation ……What about the fiery globes seen at night traversing the sky . This could well be meteors or large bolides . Can we associate this with bright night [ s ] . Not really, since again no temporal information is provided allowing us to link the two phenomena . ”
    What a disappointingly over complicated series of interpretative rationalizations . Bishop Gregory’s ‘fiery globes’ are mentioned in the same breadth – the same year – as the witnessing of illuminated nights [ not colored auroral hues ] in a century of intense fireball flux so the temporal resolution in terms of absolutely precise dates is not important . It can be logically deduced the ‘fiery globes’ were indeed meteors as we know that historically, meteor storms and at least one 20th century atmospheric impact are linked to noctilucent phenomena. Not only late June and early July of 1908 in the age of newspapers and scientific scrutiny when our planet passed through the Beta Taurid stream and was struck by at least one multi – megaton bolide or Bishop Gregory’s AD 590 entry . There is also this Chinese report in ” The Ch’un-ch’iu Chronicle dated to 687 BC :

    ” 7th year [ of Duke Chuang ,] summer ,4th month ,day hsin -mao. At night the regular stars were not seen . At midnight stars fell like rain ”

    The Tso – chuan’s explanation for the stellar opacity is ” the night was bright ” Presumably reflective cometary ice particulates in the stratosphere . If you have departed from the debate thats your choice Jon …There is much you have left unanswered .

25. Thanks for the clarification of your true self on Twitter …..There aren’t any other contributors
    to this debate though which is rather odd . Are you on friendly terms with Real Climate’s Gavin Schmidt and Mike Mann ? ……