AncientPages.com - On April 10-11, 1815, more than 13,000 feet high, Tambora Mount in Indonesia exploded, killing about 92000 people and changing the global climate.
Tambora's powerful eruption made the global climate effects felt.
The 1815 Mount Tambora eruption. The red areas are maps of the thickness of volcanic ashfall. Source - The base map was taken from a NASA picture.
Aerosols from the Tambora eruption blocked out sunlight and reduced global temperatures by 3 deg C. Europe missed a summer, and India had crop failures following the Tambora eruption.
Between 26 and 43 cubic miles of material were discharged (a recorded world record), and around 12 cubic miles of gases, dust, and rock blasted into the atmosphere.
One hundred cubic km of magma erupted, and ten thousand people were killed immediately from the pyroclastic flows, and the eventual toll due to starvation and disease may have been as high as 117,000.
During its eruption, Mt. Tambora emitted so much sulfur into the atmosphere that sunlight was dimmed around the world, and global temperatures fell by approximately 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) for several years after the eruption began. Image via earthscope.org
The ground shook and sent tsunamis with a wave height of 10 m racing across the Java Sea. An estimated 10,000 of the island's inhabitants died instantly.
The year 1816 was recorded as the "year without a summer." Most of the crops were destroyed, and in northern Europe and North America, about 100,000 people died from starvation due to this dangerous eruption.
Poisoning deposits buried all crops, causing the agricultural devastation and death of most livestock in much of the Northern Hemisphere.
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