1815 Tambora volcano in the East Indies erupts with a mighty roar. It sends enough pulverized rock into the atmosphere to disrupt weather around the globe for more than a year.
Tambora sits on Sumbawa Island, east of Java in what is today Indonesia. Geological evidence shows it probably hadn't erupted in 5,000 years.
But the volcano literally steamed into life sometime in 1814, and perhaps as early as 1812. Molten underground magma interacted with ground water, and the volcano expelled steam, ash and rocks.
Tambora exploded on April 5, 1815 — an eruption of sufficient force to make the history books on its own. Ash fell on eastern Java. More than 800 miles away, people heard a roar that sounded like thunder.
Just a foretaste.
The big show began April 10. Three columns of fire were seen towering into the sky. By the next day Tambora had ejected about 12 cubic miles of magma into the air.
But the mountain's solid towering peak was also gone. The eruption left a deep summit crater, with a rim 4,100 feet lower than the peak had once been. People in Surabaya, 300 miles away on Java, felt the earth move — possibly the result of the caldera collapse.
Between the magma ejected from below and the pulverized mountaintop above, Tambora sent more than 36 cubic miles of pulverized rock into the atmosphere. The ash falling on islands nearby immediately suffocated crops. That alone probably killed 92,000 people.
The cloud of ash that was fine and light enough to stay in the atmosphere circled the globe. Average temperatures dropped as much as 5 degrees Fahrenheit over the next year ... and beyond. Many Europeans and North Americans called 1816 the "year without a summer."
Snow fell in New England and Eastern Canada in June. (Quebec City got a foot of the stuff.) Frost was recorded in each of the summer months. Drought struck in July and August, and the sunlight was weak. Crops were stunted or failed entirely. Much of what survived and looked near to harvest was killed off by a September frost.
Europe was very cold and very rainy. Ash fell with snow. Rivers flooded. Britain, France, Switzerland and Germany lost harvests and suffered famine. The Napoleonic Wars had caused food shortages, and now there were riots and looting, then an epidemic. Some 200,000 people died in Eastern and Southern Europe from a combination of typhus and hunger.
Asia and India experienced heavy monsoons, cold temperatures and frost. Rice production fell. China suffered famine, and India was hit with a cholera epidemic.
(A similar climatic event caused by the Icelandic volcano Laki a generation earlier had also chilled the Northern Hemisphere and killed thousands by starvation.)
Mount Tambora on Sumbawa island is part of Indonesia which was then dominated by the Dutch. Tambora eruption killed at least 70,000 people on Sumbawa island direct result of the eruption, plague and famine. The famous eruption of Mount Tambora was happening the first time on 5 April 1815 eruption sound audible to Batavia (1,300 km from the center of eruption) and Ternate (1,400 km from the center of eruption). In Batavia the Dutch army at that time get ready to think there will be attacks from the armies of Mataram, while in Ternate fleet of warships prepared immediately expecting an attack from the pirates.
The biggest eruptions occurred on 10 April 1815 included in the index 7 VEI (Volcanic Explosivity Index), which by the volkanologist called Very Special (Colossal). The voice sounded quite clear eruptions to the west of Sumatra which is geographically situated 2500 km west of Tambora. Vibration and air waves by the eruption was felt up to 800 km in eastern Java. Volcanic ash continues to fall gradually hinggal April 17, 1815.
Settlements closest to the Tambora is Bima (65 km east of Tambora) and Studio (40 km to the east of the navel eruption). A king of small kingdom in the studio described the eruptions produced three eruption column rising in the sky to form the canopy. Village Bima, the whole house was covered by volcanic dust. Bima and Studio also swept away by the tsunami that flattened their settlements, the inhabitants fled in droves to the place they considered safe, most of which were killed a result of this wave.
In its investigations, Raffles found human bodies floating in the ocean or in the spread on the mainland. Charles Lyell (1797-1875) in his book Principles of Geology wrote that due to this eruption of Tambora population of 12,000 in only 26 individuals remaining.Heinrich Zollinger a missionary in 1855 to estimate the number of casualties due to the Tambora eruption was around 10,000 people.
Volcanic dust spewed by the Tambora covers an area of 500,000 km2. Akumulai volcanic dust in the sky that very many causes an area of 300 km2 in the vicinity of Tambora covered the sun for 3 days. Thickness of volcanic ash from this eruption was recorded 100 cm in Sumbawa, Lombok is 60 cm and 30 cm in Bali. Acidic volcanic dust also poison the rice fields, irrigation channels and deadly cover other plantation crops. Famine rampant on the island of Sumbawa affects 38,000 residents and 36,000 others left the island to Java. In Lombok 20,000 people died of starvation and another 100,000 migration to the island of Java. Java Island was already densely populated, causing social conflicts due to migration.
Pumice formed by the eruption is very abundant found in the Java Sea. For nearly 4 years, this pumice stone can still be met by the ships that pass these waters.
Tambora eruption also cause changes in weather around the world. In India, causing changes in the pattern of wind direction, causing shortage of rain in most of the mainland of India and the outbreak of drought occurred in 1816. In contrast, in Bangladesh the wind patterns that bring rain causes floods in September.Something similar happened in China due to overflow of the Yangtze and Yellow rivers.
Drought in India caused outbreaks of cholera is rapidly growing up into Afghanistan and Nepal. In Mecca and Medina this outbreak was brought by pilgrims from the area source outbreak. In 1823, outbreaks of cholera have reached the Caspian Sea and arrived in Moscow in 1830. The next year in Egypt, Cairo lost 12% of the population is a result of this outbreak.
Weather data in the 19th century there are records of climate change after the eruption of 1815. In 1816 recorded an average temperature of 10 degrees Celsius at the surface decreased from normal. This global cooling molecules formed from sulfur dioxide gas eruption of Tambora in space carried by the wind meets the world's atmosphere and is above the cloud so it is not washed away by rain for several years. This sulfuric acid gas hood blocking incoming sunlight and cool the earth's temperature.
In the years 1816-1817 in Europe during the summer the temperature stays cool and wet so that the plantation crop failure.As a result, famine occurred in Europe, especially in urban areas.In Paris there were several people died of starvation. A similar trend occurred in Ireland, which also infected with the outbreak of typhoid due to poor health. At least 100,000 people died from plague in Europe.
No one understands the causes of changes in weather, crop failure, famine for years. Many people accuse this happens because of the decline of morality with the decline in the arrival of people in the house of worship. Some blame the sun, cooling the ice in the Atlantic Ocean but no one blamed the volcanic eruption that occurred half a world away from Europe which is the main cause. 60 years later after the eruption of Krakatau occurred in 1883, experts examine the impact of eruptions before concluding a similar thing happened in the period 1816-1817 due to the Tambora eruption of 1815.
Following several centuries of repose, small ash clouds were observed at Tambora on Sumbawa island in 1812. On 5 April 1815, the first serious eruption began, lasting for 2 hours. A second major explosion on 10 April lasted for approximately 3 hours with a discharge rate estimated at 3 × 108 kg s-1. Collapse of the eruption column generated pyroclastic flows that destroyed the villages of Tambora and Sanggar. Over the next three or four days 50 km³ of magma was expelled in the form of ash fall and pumice-rich Pyroclastic flows, making the eruption probably the largest of the past 1,000 years. Large explosions continued until the 11 April with moderate blasts continuing until the 15 April 1815
The explosions from the volcano could be heard as far away as Mukomuko (200 km) and even in Trumon in Sumatra (2600 km). In the eastern districts of Java the eruptions were violent enough to shake houses. Ash-fall blocked out sunlight for many days across the entire island of Sumbawa. Although south-easterly monsoon winds blew much of the ash west of Tambora, in Baryuwangi in eastern Java ash fall still accumulated to a depth of 23 cm1.
The cone of Tambora before the eruption was estimated to be as high as 4300 m, which the eruption reduced to 2,850 m, as well as opening a summit caldera 6 km wide and 1 km deep.
The VEI (Volcanic Explosivity Index) 7 eruption also produced a devastating tsunami,. On the island of Sumbawa, it is estimated that 10,000 people were killed by pyroclastic flows, 32,000 by starvation and another 10,000 due to disease and hunger. The tsunami also claimed many lives.
The 1815 Tambora eruption was probably the largest eruption in historic time, expelling around 140 gigatonnes of magma and generating an ash cloud that reached a height of up to 43 km. More than 95 percent of the ejected mass was erupted as pyroclastic flows, with 40 percent of this ending up as ash fallout. Floating pumice rafts and charred tree trunks hindered shipping in the area for three years after the eruption.
The eruption also produced at least 1011 kg of SO4, leading to a fall in global average temperatures of 0.4 to 0.7ºC and the so-called ‘Year without a Summer’ in 1816. The effects included extremely cold weather in Europe, the north-eastern USAand the maritime provinces of Canada, leading to crop failures and famine, and the last great subsistence crisis in the western world. Temperatures in western and central Europe were 1-2 º C cooler than the average for the period 1810-1819. Rainfall was also unusually high across much of Europe during the summer of 1815.
FROM:Many source