Greek and German scientists claimed that the colors of paintings from previous generations may reflect the levels of pollution at that time.
In 1815, the eruption of Tambora volcano spewed out gases in the atmosphere and changed the colors of the sky. As the aerosol particles from the eruption spread through other parts of the world, European painters depicted the sky's colors as a combination of red and orange.
One of the famous painters of that time was JMW Turner and his works were the subject of the scientists' research. The research team is led by Christos Zerefos, an atmospheric physics professor from the Academy of Athens in Greece. He and his team focused on high-quality digital photographs of paintings depicting different pictures of the sunset. The artworks that were analyzed were done during the 1,500-2,000 period to account at least 50 different volcanic eruptions in various parts of the world.
"We found that colouring sunsets is the way their brains perceive greens and reds that contains important environmental information", Zerefos told Business Standard.
The team also considered that amounts of red and green colors in the horizon because, according to them, these colors are indicators of the aerosol levels in the air.
"We found that red-to-green ratios measured in the sunsets of paintings by great masters correlate well with the amount of volcanic aerosols in the atmosphere regardless of the painters and of the school of painting," Zerefos added.
Results showed that the paintings depict redder skies as we have today, a clear indication that the volcanic ash has affected the levels of aerosols in the atmosphere. Air with higher levels of aerosols is considered as having a higher level of aerosol optical depth which refers to the parameter that was calculated by identifying the ratio of red and green colors in the paintings.
This study was published in the March 26 issue of the Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.
