Tambora eruption and the Year Without a Summer
Erupción del Tambora y el año sin verano
- Date
- 1815-1816 · confidence high
- Place
- Mount Tambora, Sumbawa, Indonesia
- Credited to
- Thomas Stamford Raffles (account); climatic link established by William Humphreys (1913) and ice cores
- People
- 👤 Thomas Stamford Raffles1781–1826
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
The largest eruption in recorded history (VEI 7) killed tens of thousands and threw up sulphurous aerosols that cooled the planet: in 1816 it snowed in June in New England and crops failed across Europe. It was the first proof that volcanoes alter the global climate.
Coordinates of the volcano. The cause-and-effect link was established a century later; contemporaries did not connect the two events.
What it led to
- Climatic volcanology and aerosol forcing
- European famine of 1816-17 and emigration to America
- 'Frankenstein' written at Villa Diodati
- Solar geoengineering models
Built on
- Laki eruption (1783) and Franklin's observations
- Unknown eruption of 1809
Made possible
- Forecast of the Mount Pinatubo eruption1991
- Volcanic Explosivity Index
- Sulphate record in ice cores