This was humanity’s biggest explosion, causing a “year without summer”.

Due to the volume of material ejected, Tambora was recorded as a “massive eruption” on a scale called the Volcanic Explosion Index (IEV). Such eruptions occur every 500 to 1000 years.and there is only one telluric event that transcends them: the so-called “apocalyptic eruptions” that spewed more than a thousand cubic kilometers of lava, the last example of which was the eruption of Taupo volcano in New Zealand more than 26,000 years ago. .

Tambora boom produced A pillar of fire more than 20 kilometers high (no more than five coming from La Palma) and could be heard 2,000 kilometers away. It was far superior to Krakatoa.The event that took place 60 years later on the island of Java in Indonesia.

To make more precise comparisons, the activity of the La Palma volcano Cumbre Vieja, which erupted in 2021, was as follows: It is attenuated thousands of times more than Tambora volcano. To take another example, the eruption of Vesuvius in the 79th year of our era is considered two scales weaker than that of Tambora and killed, as it ejected one cubic kilometer of matter in Italy (100 times less than Tambora). 2,300 people.

100,000 dead immediately

According to historian Willem D’Arcy Wood, Almost 100,000 people died in the immediate aftermath of the Tambora eruption.. (“Tambora: the explosion that changed the world”, Tambora: the explosion that changed the world”).

Tambora has had many more repercussions on the planet. It destroyed the vegetation on the island of Sumbawa, where the volcano is located. Resources are running out, thousands of people died of starvation and disease, not only in Sunbawa but also in other Indonesian islands.

The mountain that existed before the spectacular eruption was over 4,000 meters high and shrunk in half. The mix of trees and vegetation drifted towards the sea, and instead of forming a delta as now in Cumbre Vieja, created floating islands, some of which are more than 5 kilometers long. These platforms crossed the seas and reached the Indian Ocean a few months later. explosive power of volcano Hours later, it created a tsunami that hit the shores of the Moluccas and caused thousands of deaths.

“The Year Without Summer”

The sulfur cloud reached the stratosphere and It created a haze around Europe that continued until the summer of 1815., which is why it was called the “year without summer”. It reduced the passage of sunlight necessary to warm the earth. According to historian D’Arcy Wood, “What happened after Tambora, It’s been three years of climate change”, he said in an interview with History Channel. “For three years, the world has cooled down and the weather systems have completely changed. And then there were widespread crop shortages and Famine from Asia to the United States and Europe”.

According to historian Richard Evans’ book ‘The Struggle for Power’ on the major events of the 19th century, by late 1816 harvests were found to have fallen to just over a quarter of normal levels in many regions.Harvest time, whatever it was, was a month later than usual.”. The Netherlands suffered terrible storms that flooded the crops and rendered them useless. The same thing happened in France, where large tracts of land were flooded. As a result, the prices of agricultural products began to rise rapidly.

By summer, temperatures were a few degrees cooler than usual. In some regions, the grapes were not even ripe at the beginning of winter. Over the course of several years, unexpected autumn frosts destroyed thousands of crops, and in parts of Europe farmers could not even plant grain. Evans says they don’t remember harvests this bad throughout their history in the German state of Baden. More than 24,000 sheep died of cold in the winter of 1815-1816 in Southern Europe.There were no records of such flooding of the Danube in Vojvodina and along its channel. The Rhine also overflowed from month to month in 1817. Snow continued in Lombardy that year until May.

Social and economic disorders in Europe

Grain prices skyrocketed, and with it the price of bread. In Paris in 1817 it doubled from the previous year. In Germany, beggars and marauders began to appear, digging the fields in search of rotten potatoes. As misery spread in many parts of Europe, deaths from hunger increased. Beggar gangs were seen from Hungary to Rome and Vienna. Most were slender women and children who cut grass and roots for food. They wandered the streets like ghosts and fell to their deaths on the roads and in the woods. In Ireland, livelihood-seeking gangs have flooded organizations that distribute clothing and supplies to the poor.

At those dates, poor Europeans ushered in large waves of immigration to the Americas. British, Scottish, Scandinavian, German and Swiss headed to the USA and Brazil. Attracted by Tsar Alexander I, many Germans moved to the uninhabitable parts of Russia as new settlers, some crossing the European steppes on foot.

“The mass movement of people across large tracts of land”says Evans, “The epidemic brought diseases”. Deaths from smallpox quadrupled. Malnutrition caused diarrhea, dysentery and edema. Hospitals were full of people suffering from scurvy from vitamin C deficiency, and they celebrated the holidays by spreading lice, typhus, and even the black plague. Thousands of people lost their lives due to these diseases in all cities of Europe, large and small, and especially the Black Plague took root in the Balkans and Ottoman lands. It was without a doubt the biggest health disaster in centuries.

Bringing grain to the most remote parts of Europe was in itself troublesome because there were no railroads and the roads were primitive. Oat and feed prices also rose, so many were doomed to starve. and the horses could not be fed. However, transport prices have also increased, further isolating Europe’s rural areas.

Then came the riots. Waves of the starving in Britain, shouting “bread or blood”, seized the granaries. The same thing happened in France and Italy, where bakeries were looted. By 1817, prices had soared to unbearable levels for the majority of Europe’s population., so gangs raided bakeries and looted farms. Trees were cut from private forests, tax collectors were boycotted, and grain distribution centers were closed.

A monumental human drama

D’Arcy Wood calculates this Poor living conditions took the lives of a million people. But as a result of the cholera epidemics that broke out all over the world immediately after, it adds tens of millions.

Worse still, in March 1815, a month before the volcanic eruption, Napoleon was determined to restore France. He trained a hundred thousand men, but was stopped at Waterloo in June by even more Germans, English and Dutch, and defeated him and put an end to his dreams. Rebuilding Europe after the Napoleonic Wars was no easy task, especially in the midst of famine and disease.

During that summer of 1815, when a series of climatic conditions began due to Tambora volcano, a group of English poets spent their holidays on Lake Geneva. Stuck indoors for days due to constant rain and dark skies, Mary Shelley wrote “Frankenstein.”A spooky novel in a stormy setting. Lord Byron wrote the poem “Darkness”, the first line of which was “I had a dream, it wasn’t all a dream”.

The bright sun went out, and the stars swept through endless space, sparse, without rays and paths, the frozen earth darkened in blind and moonless air.

Reference article: https://www.lainformacion.com/asuntos-sociales/tambora-la-gran-erupcion-de-la-historia-que-devasto-la-economia-de-europa/2850183/

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Contact address of the environment department: crizclimatica@prensaiberica.es