A book about the 1815 Tambora eruption and its effect on climate, reviewed by Margaret Harris
1816 has gone down in history as the “year without a summer”. In Geneva, the unseasonably cold and rainy weather left Mary Shelley with plenty of time to write Frankenstein. In England, unusual atmospheric conditions produced some spectacular sunsets, inspiring the artist J M W Turner’s groundbreaking landscapes. But for many, 1816 and the years that followed were unmitigated disasters, with widespread crop failures leading to famine, disease and political unrest.
The cause of all this suffering was Tambora, a volcano on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa that had erupted a few months earlier. As Gillen D’Arcy-Wood explains in his book Tambora: the Eruption that Changed the World, the 1815 Tambora eruption sent huge quantities of volcanic ash and aerosols high into the atmosphere. Together with lingering detritus from a smaller volcanic event that occurred in 1809, this debris scattered short-wave solar radiation back into space, reducing average temperatures throughout the 1810s and unleashing numerous associated climate calamities.
D’Arcy Wood is an environmental historian, meaning that his chief concerns are the effects that the eruption aftermath had on society, but he quotes knowledgeably from the technical literature on volcanic activity and digs into why a relatively modest increase in atmospheric dust could produce such disruptive and widespread effects. The result is a fascinating and thorough book that brings this long-ago event to life.
- 2014 Princeton University Press £19.95/$29.95hb 312pp
