Year without a summer
The year 1816 is known as the Year Without a Summer (also the Poverty Year, the Summer that was never here because of severe climate abnormalities that caused average global temperaturhes to decrease by 0.4–0.7 °C (0.7–1.3 °F).This resulted in major food shortages across the Northern Hemisphere.Evidence suggests that the anomaly was predominantly a volcanic winter event caused by the massive 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies, perhaps plus the 1814 eruption of Mayon in the Philippines. The Earth had already been in a centuries-long period of global cooling that started in the 14th century. Known today as the Little Ice Age, it had already caused considerable agricultural distress in Europe. The Little Ice Age's existing cooling was aggravated by the eruption of Tambora, which occurred during its concluding decades.
All vegetation on the island was destroyed. Uprooted trees, mixed with pumice ash, washed into the sea and formed rafts up to 5 km across.One pumice raft was found in the Indian Ocean, near Calcutta on 1 and 3 October 1815. Clouds of thick ash still covered the summit on 23 April. Explosions ceased on 15 July, although smoke emissions were still observed as late as 23 August. Flames and rumbling aftershocks were reported in August 1819, four years after the event.
The tremendous eruption of Mount Tambora in April 1815 was the most powerful volcanic eruption of the 19th century.The eruption and the tsunamis it triggered killed tens of thousands of people. And the magnitude of the explosion is difficult to fathom. It has been estimated that Mount Tambora stood approximately 12,000 feet tall before the 1815 eruption, before the top one-third of the mountain was completely obliterated.