The Tambora volcano is located on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa. Tambora erupted in April 1815, with far-reaching consequences not only for the surrounding area, but for the whole world. The WeatherBlog recently read a book about it. In 1815, Indonesia did not yet exist and Sumbawa was part of the Dutch East Indies. The British were also active in the area, including in the form of the East India Trading Company. The most accurate of the sparse records of the Tambora eruption come from one such English trading or pirate hunter ship. In the first weeks of April, the captain noted in his diary that it had rained ash, which had to be laboriously cleaned from the deck. The extent of the destruction caused by the eruption on Sumbawa only became known much later. Tens of thousands died in the villages on the fertile volcanic island. Similar to Pompeii, settlements were completely buried by mud and ash.
In Volcano Winter 1816 - The World in the Shadow of Tambora (or English version), the focus is nevertheless not primarily on the immediate consequences of the eruption for the immediate surroundings. Rather, Tambora's role as a catalyst of world events is presented - from famines to literary trends. The book is a kind of treatise on this particular outbreak as the mother of all teleconnections. In 1809, a few years before Tambora, there was another major volcanic eruption in the tropics, about which far less is known and which is only known from ice cores. The combined effect of this unknown and Tambora made the 1810s the coldest decade of the Little Ice Age, that cool and initially presumably also volcanic phase from around 1250 to 1850, at the end of which was the last major glacial maximum, the moraines of which can still be admired today. The famous eruption of Krakatau in 1883 cannot compete with either Tambora or the unknown eruption of 1809 and is only so well known because telegraphy was invented shortly before and the news spread correspondingly faster. In any case, Tambora is one of only about half a dozen eruptions in the Holocene to reach level 7 on the VEI scale, which measures the "explosive force" of a volcanic eruption. Another measure, the IVI (ice-core volcanic index), only includes those eruptions whose ash makes it into the stratosphere (and sooner or later into the ice at the poles) and which can therefore have a large-scale impact on the weather. Here, Tambora's status is disputed, but it was one of the largest eruptions of the second millennium AD, along with another unknown in 1258, Mount Kuwae in 1452 and Huaynaputina in 1600. The author is quite fond of Tambora and considers the eruption to be no less important than the legendary eruption of Santorini in 1628 BC, which is associated with the end of the Minoans, the legend of Atlantis and the biblical exodus of the Israelites from Egypt.
1816, the year after Tambora, went down in history as the "year without a summer". Temperatures dropped worldwide and weather patterns shifted, sometimes drastically. In India, a cholera epidemic broke out as a result of the disrupted monsoon and spread as far as Europe. In many parts of the world, the harvest failed and severe famines followed, for example in the Chinese province of Yunnan, but also in parts of Europe. The author traces the effects of Tambora much further and finds connections to social upheaval, the emergence of the opium trade, the development of the ice age theory, as well as art and literature of the following decades (Mary Shelley and her Frankenstein virtually lead us through the book). This may be exaggerated in places, or oversimplified in the argumentation, but the complex dependence of human society on the climate is explained vividly and impressively. The whole thing is easy to read, also because it is not just about purely scientific facts. Recommended reading!
Weather outlook
At the moment, we are not dealing with the mysterious machinations of some distant volcano, but with a Mediterranean low that has been sitting over the Iberian Peninsula recently and is now sliding a little to the east. There it will connect with cold air further east and will continue to bring cold weather with unproductive snow showers in the eastern Alps until tomorrow (Thursday). On Good Friday, the weather will initially be friendlier with an intermediate high pressure, but this will soon be followed by a decent warm front (milder, wet, snow only high up), some of which will make an appearance on Friday afternoon or Saturday at the latest. The Easter egg hunt on Sunday will then probably take place in sunshine again, at least in the north, and it will be foehn-like. The week after Easter will be unsettled. The exact course is still uncertain, but it will tend to remain relatively cool and changeable.
