Eruption of Mount Tambora and the Year Without a Summer

Date

10 April 1815 (climactic eruption); global cooling through 1816

Category

Environment & climate

Region

Sumbawa, Dutch East Indies (modern Indonesia)

Era

Modern

Significance

On 10 April 1815 Mount Tambora on the island of Sumbawa in the Dutch East Indies (modern Indonesia) erupted in the most powerful volcanic event in recorded history, a VEI-7 explosion that ejected roughly 40 cubic kilometres of material and blew away the upper third of the mountain.

The immediate blast, ashfall, and ensuing famine and disease on Sumbawa and neighbouring islands killed tens of thousands, with total death-toll estimates ranging from about 71,000 to over 100,000. The sulfate aerosol veil lofted into the stratosphere lowered Northern Hemisphere temperatures by roughly 0.4 to 0.7 degrees Celsius and produced the 1816 Year Without a Summer, with June frosts and snow in New England and Europe, widespread crop failures, and what historians call the last great subsistence crisis of the Western world. The resulting famine drove food riots, typhus epidemics, and mass migration, while monsoon disruption in Bengal helped seed the first global cholera pandemic that began spreading in 1817. The cold, gloomy summer also stranded a literary circle at Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva, where Mary Shelley conceived Frankenstein and John Polidori wrote The Vampyre, giving the catastrophe a lasting cultural legacy.

Empires active in 10 April 1815 (climactic eruption); global cooling through 1816

• Russian Empire
  1721 CE – 1917 CE
• British Empire
  1583 CE – 1997 CE
• Qing Dynasty
  1636 CE – 1912 CE
• Spanish Empire
  1492 CE – 1976 CE
• Portuguese Empire
  1415 CE – 1999 CE
• Mughal Empire
  1526 CE – 1857 CE

Related environment & climate events

• 1931 Central China Floods
  June–August 1931
• The Dust Bowl
  1930–1940 (peak 1934–1936)
• Yellowstone, the world's first national park
  1 March 1872
• Laki Fissure Eruption and the Mist Hardships Famine
  8 June 1783 – 7 February 1784
• The Great Lisbon Earthquake, Tsunami, and Fire
  1 November 1755
• Doji bara (Skull) Famine and the Great El Nino of 1789-1793
  1791-1792 (drought from 1789)

Further reading

Tambora: The Eruption That Changed the World

If you read one book

Tambora: The Eruption That Changed the World

Gillen D'Arcy Wood

Accessible science-history of the 1815 eruption and its global chaos.

Get it on Amazon →

Also worth reading

• The Year Without Summer: 1816 and the Volcano That Darkened the World and Changed History — William K. KlingamanAmazon →
• Tambora and the Year without a Summer: How a Volcano Plunged the World into Crisis — Wolfgang BehringerAmazon →

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