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Eruptions and Disruptions


Iceland's volcano pales before giants that may have sped U.S. settlers and led to 'Frankenstein'



A 2009 shot of the Tambora volcano; its 1815 eruption, at 7 on the explosive index, killed 117,000 and displaced 24 cubic miles of lava and pulverized rock


...The eruption from Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano, which has disrupted air traffic across Europe, is dwarfed by Tambora's explosive power—the U.S. Geological Survey calls it "the most powerful eruption in recorded history." Because news in those days traveled by ship, word of Tambora's devastation spread slowly in comparison to the better-known and better-documented eruption of Krakatoa, 68 years later (after the invention of the telegraph in 1837). But at 24 cubic miles of debris, Tambora was much bigger than Krakatoa (the low estimate was 3.5 cubic miles), the famed Vesuvius (1.4 cubic miles) and the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington (0.3 cubic mile). In comparison, Eyjafjallajökull is little more than a planetary popped zit. So far.

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The 20th century's second biggest blast, a Krakatoa-like VEI 6, came in 1991 when Mount Pinatubo on Luzon in the Philippines killed 800 people, left 100,000 homeless and put enough ash and gas into the stratosphere to lower the average temperature of the planet by 0.9 to 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit over the next two years, disrupting weather patterns. But it, too, was relative child's play.

In the summer following Tambora's 1815 eruption, crop failures dotted the northern hemisphere—rice failed in parts of China, wheat and corn in Europe, potatoes in Ireland (where it rained nonstop for eight weeks and triggered a typhus epidemic that killed 65,000 and spread to England and Europe). At Lake Geneva in Switzerland, vacationers from England sat out gloomy June storms reading ghost stories and composing their own. Lord Byron wrote a narrative poem, "Darkness," in which there was no sun, "no day." His personal physician, Dr. John Polidori, wrote "The Vampyre," and Mary Shelley began "Frankenstein." Famine spread across Switzerland. Food riots and insurrections swept France, which had already been caught up in the chaos following Napoleon's 1815 defeat at Waterloo. Tambora may not have been the sole cause of these disasters. Smaller eruptions of volcanoes had taken place in the Caribbean (Soufrière on St. Vincent in 1812) and the Philippines (Mayon on Luzon in 1814). The planet, beginning in the 15th century, had been going through periods of intense climatic change—sharp cooling and warming now collectively known as the Little Ice Age. In the coldest periods, mountain glaciers advanced around the world and the Thames River in London froze over in winter. But the most severe periods of cold seemed to be abating when Tambora came along. Its effects came as a jolt.


In New England, 1816 was called "the year without a summer" because there were crop-killing frosts every month, including the normally frost-free months of summer, across the region. It snowed in Virginia in June and again on the Fourth of July. At Monticello, Thomas Jefferson, the retired president, had such a poor corn harvest that he had to borrow $1,000 to make up for lost income. In New Haven, Conn., the last frost of spring was on June 11, and the first frost of autumn on Aug. 22—shortening the normal growing season by 55 days. Corn, the staple crop of New England, couldn't mature under such conditions. Crop failures were widespread. In Connecticut, three-quarters of the state's corn crop was too unripe, soft or moldy to make corn meal.

While New Englanders faced food shortages and higher prices, they did not experience famine. But the hardship was a tipping point that helped propel Yankee farmers off the land. In their elegant 1983 book, "Volcano Weather: The Story of the Year Without a Summer," Woods Hole oceanographer Henry Stommel and his wife, Elizabeth, wrote: "The summer of 1816 marked the point at which many New England farmers who had weighed the advantages of going west made up their minds to do so." The great migration westward had already begun, but Tambora gave it a boost.


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