The summer of acid rain

摘要

Around mid-morning on Pentecost, June 8th of 1783, in clear and calm weather, a black haze of sand ap peared to the north of the mountains. The cloud was so extensive that in a short time it had spread over the entire area and so thick that it caused darkness indoors. That night, strong earthquakes and tremors occurred." Thus begins the eyewitness account of one of the most remarkable episodes of climate change ever seen. It was written by a Lutheran priest, Jon Steingrimsson, in the Sida district of southern Iceland. At nine o'clock that morning, the earth split open along a 16-mile fissure called the Laid volcano. Over the next eight months, in a series of vast belches, more lava gushed through the fissure than from any volcano in historic times-15 cubic kilometres, enough to bury the whole island of Manhattan to the top of the Rockefeller Centre. Pentecost is the Christian festival celebrating the appearance of the Holy Spirit to the Apostles with the sound, the Bible says, "as of a mighty rushing wind" and an appearance "like as of fire". But there was nothing metaphorical or festive about the winds and fire of the Laki eruption. It was the greatest calamity in Iceland's history.