Recently, the undersea volcanic eruption in Tonga has focused people's attention on the volcano, and one of the most common words in many media reports is --- summerless year. After the calculation and analysis of professionals, it can be determined that the impact of this eruption is limited and will not cause such serious consequences, so how terrible is the year without summer.
In 1815, the eruption of Mount Tambora on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa, although it was only a small geological activity for the earth, was the worst volcanic eruption on record, and the tsunami caused by the volcano swept through the entire Indonesian archipelago, Sumbawa Island was razed to the ground, and acid rain turned the nearby sea into a veritable no-man's land.
The following year, in 1816 (the Year of the Rat), the global average temperature dropped by 0.5 degrees, which is known as the ---- year without summer.
This is one of the darkest moments in human history, the northeast of the United States and Canada are the most seriously affected, it is said that the average temperature temperature dropped by 2 ° C - 4 ° C, the northeast of the United States in the spring is still a thriving scene, but in May suddenly appear frost, most of the crops are directly frozen to death. In June, there were blizzards in Canada and New England in the United States. In July and August, the temperature in some places was like a roller coaster, just reaching 35 ° C, and then suddenly dropping to 0 ° C in a few hours. A large number of crops were frozen to death, and many people were also starved to death.
The eruption is said to have affected atmospheric circulation, causing Napoleon to encounter a heavy rain that affected the outcome of the battle at the Battle of Waterloo. For example, the French writer Victor Hugo described the Battle of Waterloo as "an untimely sky shrouded in dark clouds that led to the collapse of the world." ”
At that time, China was in the qing dynasty Jiaqing twenty-one years, the eighth month of the lunar calendar was as cold and terrible as the cold winter waxing moon, China's rice harvest was out, people took refuge everywhere, most of China was shrouded in the shadow of famine, according to historical records: "It was a great famine of the year, the road died pillow, the people were hungry, hungry for thousands of miles", of which the most affected was Yunnan, known as the Yunnan famine.
It wasn't until four years later, in 1819, that the climate impact of the volcano was largely over.
Every time a natural disaster occurs, food shortages are one of the biggest problems. As an ancient civilization that has been shrouded in the shadow of famine for thousands of years, the mainland has always had reserve grain - after all, the operability of our own grain storage is too poor, and most people do not have this sense of crisis, or the country is reliable.
The central grain reserve is mainly responsible for the overall and strategic solution of our grain supply in the face of major natural disasters or other emergencies in the country. In addition, our country has a reserve of meat. For example, pork during the epidemic, remember that we have a sudden recurrence of the epidemic here on the day the pork rose to 24 pieces of a pound and had to grab, but it was lowered in two days, and now it seems to be thirteen or four pounds.
The amount of grain reserves on the mainland is not made public online. However, the white paper "China's Food Security" shows that in 2018, there were 670 million tons of standard grain warehouses and 240 million tons of simple warehouses, and the total effective warehouse capacity increased by 31.9% over 1996, with a total inventory of 910 million tons. The average annual consumption of rations in Chinese is more than 200 million tons, so our country's grain reserves have always been sufficient, and we do not have to worry about the problem of food shortages due to natural disasters for the time being.