Laki Eruption

Laki Eruption

 Commissioned by PAGES Horizon.

 “Mainland Europe, 1783.

A dry fog appears above the fields, forests and cities of Europe. Occasionally it disappeared but it would always return soon after. Neither sun nor rain seemed to dissipate this unusual haze. And its effects were widespread and terrible.”

The Laki Fissure in Iceland began an eight-month eruption in June 1783. An event that caused widespread effects across Europe: the air smelled like gunpowder, making it hard to breath; sunlight was blocked, turning plants brown and sickly; and the sun turned a menacing red.

 However, to the people across mainland Europe, these events were a total mystery with many learned individuals giving many an explanation. By the time the news of the Icelandic volcano had made its way to the European continent, the effects of the volcanic fumes had dissipated. The two pieces of information were too far apart for anyone to make the link.

 This mystery wouldn’t be pieced together until a hundred years later in 1883 when the Krakatoa volcano erupted in Indonisia. Facilitated by widespread telegraph communications, the news of the eruption and its effects arrived to so quickly as to create an obvious link. It was this information that Ammund Helland, a Norwegian geologist, researchers were able to piece together the cause of the red fog of 1793.

Illustrating the importance of the work

We were commissioned by PAGES Horizon to help bring this story by Dr Katrin Kleeman to an audience ranging from teenagers all the way to early career scientists. The PAGES Horizon magazine is an important resource to learn about a variety of scientific subjects covered by the Past Global Changes (PAGES) group, “which aims to understand the Earth’s past environment in order to obtain better predictions of future climate and environment, and inform strategies for sustainability.”

 Our team met with Dr Kleeman to get a better feel for the story. It is in the retelling of a scientist’s research that we often identify the narrative that would be of greatest impact to the identified audience. And in this case, it was obvious that the true story of Dr Kleeman’s article wasn’t so much the eruption itself, but how communication technologies support the scientific process.

 With a story in mind, the Cooked Illustrations team wrote a script, reviewed by Kleeman, and then created rough storyboards of the comic pages. Once these were approved by Dr Kleeman and the PAGES Horizon editorial team, we finished them.

 The material was published on PAGES Horizon as comic book pages.

 Dr Kleeman received individual panels and assets from the project to support in future communication efforts.