Paper short abstract:

This paper papers looks at the climatic and societal impacts of three tropical volcanic eruptions – Huaynaputina (1600), Komaga-take/Parker (1640/1641) and the 1690s unknown event – in eastern and western Switzerland by combining modern climate reconstruction data with novel archive material.

Paper long abstract:

Since the extensive research on the long-term effects of the 1815 Tambora eruption (Behringer 2015) it is recognized, how much large tropical volcanic eruptions can transform a society. However, where single eruptions events such as Parker in 1640/1641 have been analysed (Stoffel et al. 2022), there has been less focus on the potential teleconnections of multiple eruptions on the same study area. With a transdisciplinary approach, this paper papers looks at the climatic and societal impacts of three tropical volcanic eruptions – Huaynaputina (1600), Komaga-take/Parker (1640/1641) and the 1690s unknown event – in eastern and western Switzerland.

Using the newly developed data processing tool called ClimeApp, in a first step the climatological impact will be assessed with modern climate reconstruction data from the ModE-RA project (Franke et al. 2023). Novel archive material from two municipal institutions – the Hôpital des bourgeois de Fribourg and the Heilig-Geist-Spital in St. Gallen – allows us in a second step to determine the annually recorded harvest yields especially of the viti- and caseiculture for those two regions, which enables to look then for potential interrelations. Essential archival sources, such as the Ratsmanuale (protocols) and the Mandatenbücher (regulations), depict whether the municipalities of Fribourg and St. Gallen deployed any measures or coping mechanisms in the wake of these volcanic eruptions and how these measures transformed over a century.

In other words, we will better understand the possible impacts of multiple volcanic eruptions spanned over the period of almost hundred years on the same study region.