1815 Eruption of Mount Tambora

        On April 10th, 1815, the top of Mount Tambora (also known as Mount Tamboro or Gunung Tambora), located on the northern coast of Sumbawa Island in present-day Indonesia, exploded. What resulted was the spewing of massive amounts of ash, pumice, fumes, and magma from within the Earth’s crust. Mount Tambora displaced approximately 19 cubic miles of debris. For comparison, this is approximately seventy-six times more debris than the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980. This eruption had a dramatic impact on the climate, eventually being known as the year without a summer which has inspired many publications about this catastrophic event. Places like China and Tibet experienced unusually cold weather; while Europe was experiencing unusually high levels of rainfall. On a global scale, this eruption resulted in a temperature decrease of approximately three degrees. These unseasonal weather conditions did not bode well for the people of this time. Eventually, the eruption of Mount Tambora would become known as the deadliest in human history. The ash settlement, unseasonal temperatures, and massive amounts of rainfall lead many people to starve as crops failed. Ash made it nearly impossible for residents near the eruption site to find freshwater. The incredible ash clouds that would’ve been seen have since become the focal point of many artist’s paintings.

      

There is no way to mitigate the impacts of volcanic eruptions on the natural environment. We cannot simply tell the volcano “oh, I think that’s enough magma and ash, for now, let’s try again later” and the eruption stopped. However, we can mitigate the impacts this has on humans, albeit minor at best. The most effective way to mitigate the consequences of volcanic eruptions on human populations is through the timely evacuation of the people residing within the danger zone.  People at this time could not have easily packed up their belongings and evacuated. There likely wouldn’t have been any place to reasonably house those evacuated. They also didn’t have the advanced seismic technology that we have today available to make predicting eruptions easier. Even if someone had been able to predict the eruption of Mount Tambora there wouldn’t have been a good way to make that information readily available and people were not likely to be well prepared for such an event. The telephone wasn’t even invented until 1876 so it would’ve been incredibly difficult to get information across boundaries. Overall, with these variables in mind, I do not believe there was much that the people of 1815 could’ve done to reduce the impacts of Mount Tambora’s historic eruption.

 Want to know more? Check out this video! ↓↓↓

   

Links to More Information

• https://www.britannica.com/place/Mount-Tambora

• https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/blast-from-the-past-65102374/

• https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/content/day-history-mount-tambora-explosively-erupts-1815

• https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/39412/mount-tambora-volcano-sumbawa-island-indonesia

• https://scied.ucar.edu/shortcontent/mount-tambora-and-year-without-summer

• https://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2016/05/26/year-without-a-summer-1816-mount-tambora/84855694/

**Source information for the images is available in the Alt Text of each individual image.**

In case of mishap, I have provided the source information for each image below listed in order of appearance in the post.

1. “The Eruption of Mount Tambora 1815” by Kenny Chmielewski and Christine McCabe - This image is an infographic of the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora (Citation: Rafferty, John P. “Mount Tambora 200 Years Later.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2015, www.britannica.com/story/mount-tambora-2 00-years-later.)

2. “The Active Volcano of Mount Tambora” by NASA Johnson - This image shows an aerial view of the active volcano that is present at Mount Tambora. (Citation: "The active volcano of Mount Tambora" by NASA Johnson is licensed with CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/)

3. “Violent Volcanoes” by Janet Loehrke - This image offers a comparison of how much ash was projected into the atmosphere during the Mount Tambora eruption and other notable eruptions. (Citation: Rice, Doyle. “200 Years Ago, We Endured a 'Year without a Summer'.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 9 June 2016, www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2016/05/26/year-without-a-summer-1816-mount-tambora/84855694/.)