The Year Without a Summer, also known as the
Poverty Year and Eighteen hundred and
froze to death, was 1816, in which severe summer climate
abnormalities destroyed crops in Northern Europe, the American Northeast and eastern Canada[1][2].
Historian John D. Post has called this "the last great subsistence crisis
in the western world".
Causes
It is now generally thought that the aberrations occurred
because of the 5 April – 15 April
1815 volcanic eruptions of Mount
Tambora on the island of Sumbawa
in the Dutch East Indies (in today's Indonesia)
which ejected immense amounts of volcanic dust into the upper atmosphere.
Other volcanoes were active during the same time frame
These other eruptions had already built up a substantial
amount of atmospheric dust. As is common following a massive volcanic eruption,
temperatures fell worldwide owing to less sunlight passing through the atmosphere.
Description
The unusual climate aberrations of 1816 had the greatest
effect on the American northeast, the Canadian Maritimes,
Newfoundland, and northern Europe. Typically,
the late spring and summer of the northeastern U.S. are relatively stable:
temperatures (average of both day and night) average about 68–77°F
(20–25°C), and rarely fall below 41°F (5°C). Summer
snow is an extreme rarity, though May flurries sometimes occur.
In May of 1816, however, frost killed
off most of the crops that had been planted, and in June two large snowstorms
in eastern Canada
and New England resulted in many human deaths. Nearly
a foot of snow was observed in Quebec
City in early June. In July and August, lake and river ice were observed
as far south as Pennsylvania. Rapid, dramatic temperature swings
were common, with temperatures sometimes reverting from normal or above-normal
summer temperatures as high as 95°F (35°C) to near-freezing within
hours. Even though farmers south of New
England did succeed in bringing some crops to maturity, maize (corn)
and other grain
prices rose dramatically. Oats, for example, rose from 12¢ a bushel the
previous year to 92¢ a bushel.
Effects
In America, many historians cite the year without a
summer as a primary motivation for the western movement and rapid settlement
of what is now central and western New York and the American Midwest. Many New Englanders
were wiped out by the year, and tens of thousands struck out for the richer
soil and better growing conditions of the Upper
Midwest (then the Northwest Territory). (A specific instance
of this was when the family of Joseph Smith, eventual founder of The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints, moved from Sharon, Vermont
to Palmyra, New York
in western New York state after several crop failures.) While
crops had been poor for several years, the final blow came in 1815 with the
eruption of Tambora.
Europe, still recuperating from the Napoleonic Wars, suffered from food shortages.
Food riots broke out in Britain and France and
grain warehouses were looted. The violence was worst in landlocked
Switzerland, where famine caused
the government to declare a national emergency. Huge storms, abnormal rainfall
and floodings of the major rivers of Europe (including
the Rhine)
are attributed to the event, as was the frost setting
in during August 1816. A BBC documentary using figures compiled in Switzerland estimated
that fatality rates in 1816 were twice that of average years, giving an approximate
European fatality total of 200,000 deaths.
The eruption of Tambora also caused Hungary
to experience brown snow. Italy experienced something similar, with red snow falling
throughout the year. The cause of this is believed to have been volcanic
ash in the atmosphere.
Cultural effects
In July 1816 "incessant rainfall" during that "wet,
ungenial summer" forced Mary
Shelley, John William Polidori and their friends
to stay indoors for much of their Swiss holiday. They decided to have a contest,
seeing who could write the scariest story, leading Shelley to write Frankenstein,
or The Modern Prometheus and Polidori to write The
Vampyre.
High levels of ash in the atmosphere led to unusually
spectacular sunsets during this period, a feature celebrated in the paintings
of J. M. W. Turner. (A similar phenomenon was observed
after the 1883
Krakatoa eruption, and on the West Coast of the United States
following the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines.)
The lack of oats may have inspired the German inventor
Karl Drais to research new ways of horseless transportation,
which led to the invention of the Draisine
or velocipede.
This was the archetype of the modern bicycle
(also motorcycle) and a step towards mechanized personal
transport.[3]
Comparable events
References
- BBC Timewatch documentary: Year Without Summer,
Cicada Films (BBC2, 27 May 2005)
- Henry & Elizabeth Stommel: Volcano Weather:
The Story of 1816, the Year without a Summer, Seven Seas Press, Newport
RI 1983 ISBN 0915160714
- Hans-Erhard Lessing: Automobilitaet: Karl Drais
und die unglaublichen Anfaenge, Leipzig 2003
External links
Armageddon Online
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