ACP Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ACP 1680-7324 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acp-7-4027-2007 Atmospheric effects of volcanic eruptions as seen by famous artists and depicted in their paintings Zerefos C. S. 1 2 Gerogiannis V. T. 3 Balis D. 4 Zerefos S. C. 5 Kazantzidis A. 4 National Observatory of Athens, Athen, Greece Academy of Athens, Athen, Greece National Meteorological Service, Athen, Greece Laboratory of Atmospheric Physics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece School of Architecture, National Technical University of Athens, Athen, Greece 02 08 2007 7 15 4027 4042 This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This article is available from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/7/4027/2007/acp-7-4027-2007.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/7/4027/2007/acp-7-4027-2007.pdf

Paintings created by famous artists, representing sunsets throughout the period 1500–1900, provide proxy information on the aerosol optical depth following major volcanic eruptions. This is supported by a statistically significant correlation coefficient (0.8) between the measured red-to-green ratios of a few hundred paintings and the dust veil index. A radiative transfer model was used to compile an independent time series of aerosol optical depth at 550 nm corresponding to Northern Hemisphere middle latitudes during the period 1500–1900. The estimated aerosol optical depths range from 0.05 for background aerosol conditions, to about 0.6 following the Tambora and Krakatau eruptions and cover a period practically outside of the instrumentation era.

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