Mike Baillie
Mike Baillie ( Michael GL Baillie ) is an emeritus professor at Queen's University Belfast ( Northern Ireland) at the Institute of paleoecology. He is a leading international expert in dendrochronology, and was in the 1970s and 1980s largely complicit in the creation of the Irish oak chronology.
Dendrochronology and Dendroecology
To the years 2354, 1628, 1159, 208 BC and 540 AD, was found in many trees the growth or annual rings over larger regions, sometimes even around the world, disrupted. Especially for the years 535-544 AD also reported near- and far-eastern sources via atmospheric disturbances and, as Michael the Syrian, that the sun would have 18 months seemed weak. This period also saw the Justinian plague falls. Dendrochronology could thus explain otherwise difficult to interpret traditions to the effect that at that time a global atmospheric turbidity took place, which led to famine and pestilence (weather anomaly of 535/536 ). Also in Irish mythology and chronologies were found traces of this event, as Baillie specifically discussed in his books "Exodus to Arthur " and "The Celtic Gods".
The cause of this climate catastrophe was initially a volcanic eruption with a VEI 7-8 In 1990, however, appeared a book which had come from an astronomical point of view to the conclusion that, especially in the 5th and 6th centuries, the earth a bombardment of comets could have been exposed. Baillie favored because of this long period of time this " comet " hypothesis. However, then showed studies of Greenland ice cores that the "Year -540 - Event 'must be pretty clearly attributed to a Vulkanausbrauch. By evaluating especially ice cores and medieval Irish chronologies, Baillie and his co-authors were able to show in 2013 that were associated for the years 431-1649 AD severe winter with volcanic eruptions.
Book publications
- Baillie, MGL: Tree -Ring Dating and Archaeology, London, 1982 ( Croom Helm ).
- Baillie, MGL: A Slice through Time: dendrochronology and precision dating, London 1995 ( Routledge ).
- Baillie, MGL: Exodus to Arthur: catastrophic encounters with comets, London 1999 ( Batsford ).
- McCafferty, P. and Baillie, MGL: The Celtic Gods: comets in Irish mythology, London 2005 ( Tempus ).
- Baillie, MGL: New Light on the Black Death: the cosmic connection, London 2006 ( Tempus ).