In the summer of the 21st year of Jiaqing, that is, in the eighth month of the lunar calendar in 1816, heavy snow fell in many parts of China, and according to the records at that time, "the weather was suddenly as cold as winter", and even the southern city of Yunnan in China was not spared.
This abnormal cooling affects not only our country, but also in Europe, the Americas and other regions, it is also facing abnormal cooling, even people living on the equator do not feel the slightest heat, so this year is also known as the "year without summer".
Because summer is the main season for food growth, coupled with the fact that the tropical regions have never experienced frost, the crops grown are generally not frost-resistant, so that in this abnormal low temperature, many crops have reduced production or even failed to harvest, resulting in outbreaks of famine of varying degrees around the world.
At that time, Li Yuyang, a poet in Yunnan, described the scene at that time with poetry: "Three hundred dollars to buy a liter of millet, a liter of millet to fill the stomach for three days." Where does the poor people get their money with their bare hands, and sell it on the street with men and women? Knowing that it is difficult to save the hunger by selling children, he endured being recorded by the ghost uncle at the same time..."
It is hard to imagine that the great crisis was triggered by the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815, located in the northern part of the Indonesian island of Sumbawa.
Mount Tambora erupts
1982 American Chris. Professor Newhall and Stephen. Selph proposed to measure the intensity of eruptions based on the volume of the eruptions, the clouds of the volcanoes, and the data from the qualitative measurements. Among them, the maximum eruption level is 8, the lowest level is 0, and the 0-level volcano is a non-explosive eruption volcano.
Each increase in the level of the volcanic eruption index represents a 10-fold increase in the power of the volcanic eruption. In the last 10,000 years, no volcanic eruption level has reached 8, which means that the eruption level of 7 is the highest eruption level we can record in history, and the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora was a supervolcano of 7.
On April 5, 1815, Mount Tambora erupted, this time until mid-July, spewing out about 1.7 million tons of ash and rubble, and the loud noise caused by the eruption can be heard from 2,500 kilometers away, and the energy of this eruption is equivalent to the power of 62,000 atomic bombs of Hiroshima. Some 60,000 people lost their lives in the eruption, but a catastrophe is brewing across the globe.
A year without summer
The eruption of the Tambora supervolcano not only sprayed high-temperature molten material onto the earth's surface, but also released a large amount of volcanic ash into the air, and the volcanic ash would block the sun, making it difficult for solar energy to reach the earth's surface, resulting in a continuous decrease in the earth's temperature.
In addition, the eruption also released a large amount of sulfur dioxide, which formed a cloud of bright white particles containing high reflectivity in the stratosphere, reducing the transmittance of solar radiation and, like volcanic ash, sulfur dioxide also caused the earth to cool down.
According to the study, after the eruption of Mount Tambora, the global temperature dropped by 0.4 to 0.7 degrees Celsius, of which 1816 was the coldest year in the northern hemisphere after 1400.