Year Without a Summer
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Mount Tambora (or Tamboro) is an active stratovolcano which is a peninsula of the island of Sumbawa, Indonesia. Sumbawa is flanked both to the north and south by oceanic crust, and Tambora was formed by the active subduction zone beneath it. This raised Mount Tambora as high as Template:Convert, making it, in the 18th century, one of the tallest peaks in the Indonesian archipelago. After a large magma chamber inside the mountain filled over the course of several decades, volcanic activity reached a historic climax in the eruption of 10 April 1815. This eruption was about a volcanic explosivity index (VEI) of 7, the only eruption unambiguously confirmed of that size since the Lake Taupo eruption in about 180 CE. (The Heaven Lake eruption of Baekdu Mountain around 969 CE may have also been VEI-7.)
With an estimated ejecta volume of 160 km3, Tambora's 1815 outburst was the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history. The explosion was heard on Sumatra island more than 2000 km away. Heavy volcanic ash falls were observed as far away as Borneo, Sulawesi, Java, and Maluku Islands. Most deaths from the eruption were from starvation and disease, as the eruptive fallout ruined agricultural productivity in the local region. The death toll was at least 71,000 people, of whom 11,000–12,000 were killed directly by the eruption; the often-cited figure of 92,000 people killed is believed to be overestimated.
The eruption caused global climate anomalies that included the phenomenon known as "volcanic winter": 1816 became known as the "Year Without a Summer" because of the effect on North American and European weather. Crops failed and livestock died in much of the Northern Hemisphere, resulting in the worst famine of the 19th century.
During an excavation in 2004, a team of archaeologists discovered cultural remains buried by the 1815 eruption. They were kept intact beneath the 3-m-deep pyroclastic deposits. At the site, dubbed the 'Pompeii of the East', the artifacts were preserved in the positions they had occupied in 1815.
