Tambora: The Eruption That Changed the World by Gillen D'Arcy Wood Page A
Authors: Gillen D'Arcy Wood
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density that—one scientific study has found—corresponds to the “optical aerosol depth” of the colossal volcanic eruption that year. 3
Figure 0.1. This 2007 model of Tambora’s sulfate cloud shows its global reach, with a band of high aerosol concentration at mid- to high latitudes in both hemispheres, notably over the North Atlantic and Western Europe. This model situates the volcanic cloud in the stratosphere, 24–32 kilometers above the Earth. (Chaochao Gao, “Atmospheric Volcanic Loading Derived from Bipolar Ice Cores: Accounting for the Spatial Distribution of Volcanic Deposition,” Journal of Geophysical Research 112 [2007]: D09109; © American Geophysical Union).
Forster, Turner, and Friedrich—all committed skywatchers—saw the imprint of major atmospheric changes in the North Atlantic. But neither Forster’s London sky “on fire” in September 1815 nor the nearly three years of destructive global cooling that ensued inspired anyone to the realization that a faraway volcanic eruption had caused it all. Not until the Cold War—and the development of meteorological instruments to measure nuclear fallout—did scientists begin study of the atmospheric residency of volcanic aerosols. The sun-blocking dust veil of a major eruption, it was concluded, might linger above the earth for up to three years. Two centuries after Franklin’s first tentative speculations, the geophysical chain linking volcanism and climate could at last be proven.
Figure 0.2. Caspar David Friedrich, Ships in the Harbor (1816). Sanssouci Palace, Potsdam. (© Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY).
I dwell on this point for good reason. The formidable, occasionally mind-bending challenge in writing this book has been to trace cataclysmic world events the cause of which the historical actors themselves were ignorant. Generations of historians since have done little better. The Tamboran climate emergency followed hard upon the devastations of the Napoleonic Wars and has always remained in the shadows of that epochal conflict. Out of sight and out of mind, Tambora was the volcanic stealth bomber of the early nineteenth-century. Be it the retching cholera victim in Calcutta, the starving peasant children of Yunnan or County Tyrone, the hopeful explorer of a Northwest Passage through the Arctic Ocean, or the bankrupt land speculator in Baltimore, the world’s residents were oblivious to the volcanic drivings of their fate. Equally challenging for me as an environmental historian has been to capture the physically remote relation between cause and effect in measuring Tambora’s impact on the global commons of the nineteenth century. Volcanic strife traveled great distances and via obscure agents. But it is only by tracing such “teleconnections”—a guiding principle of today’s climate and ecological sciences—that the worldwide tragedy of Tambora can be rescued from its two-century oblivion.
Climate change is hard to see and no less difficult to imagine. After a day’s climb through the dense forests of Sumbawa Island, drenched in tropical rains, I almost didn’t succeed in seeing at firsthand the great Tambora’s evacuated peak. Then, at daybreak on the second morning, the clouds suddenly lifted, and we were able to complete our ascent along the treeless ridges. Nearing the summit, we clambered over flat pool tables of tan, serrated rock and left our boot prints in the black volcanic sand. Almost without warning, we found ourselves at the rim of a great inverted dome of earth, with sheer rock walls leading down to a pearl-green lake a kilometer below. My camera whirred as puffclouds of sulfur performed lazy inversions in the still, separate universe of Tambora’s yawning caldera. Its six-kilometer diameter might as well have been a thousand. My swimming eyes performed no better than my camera in taking measure of the volcano’s unhealed intestinal canyon, let alone in imagining its once pristine peak a mile above me in what was
Figure 0.1. This 2007 model of Tambora’s sulfate cloud shows its global reach, with a band of high aerosol concentration at mid- to high latitudes in both hemispheres, notably over the North Atlantic and Western Europe. This model situates the volcanic cloud in the stratosphere, 24–32 kilometers above the Earth. (Chaochao Gao, “Atmospheric Volcanic Loading Derived from Bipolar Ice Cores: Accounting for the Spatial Distribution of Volcanic Deposition,” Journal of Geophysical Research 112 [2007]: D09109; © American Geophysical Union).
Forster, Turner, and Friedrich—all committed skywatchers—saw the imprint of major atmospheric changes in the North Atlantic. But neither Forster’s London sky “on fire” in September 1815 nor the nearly three years of destructive global cooling that ensued inspired anyone to the realization that a faraway volcanic eruption had caused it all. Not until the Cold War—and the development of meteorological instruments to measure nuclear fallout—did scientists begin study of the atmospheric residency of volcanic aerosols. The sun-blocking dust veil of a major eruption, it was concluded, might linger above the earth for up to three years. Two centuries after Franklin’s first tentative speculations, the geophysical chain linking volcanism and climate could at last be proven.
Figure 0.2. Caspar David Friedrich, Ships in the Harbor (1816). Sanssouci Palace, Potsdam. (© Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY).
I dwell on this point for good reason. The formidable, occasionally mind-bending challenge in writing this book has been to trace cataclysmic world events the cause of which the historical actors themselves were ignorant. Generations of historians since have done little better. The Tamboran climate emergency followed hard upon the devastations of the Napoleonic Wars and has always remained in the shadows of that epochal conflict. Out of sight and out of mind, Tambora was the volcanic stealth bomber of the early nineteenth-century. Be it the retching cholera victim in Calcutta, the starving peasant children of Yunnan or County Tyrone, the hopeful explorer of a Northwest Passage through the Arctic Ocean, or the bankrupt land speculator in Baltimore, the world’s residents were oblivious to the volcanic drivings of their fate. Equally challenging for me as an environmental historian has been to capture the physically remote relation between cause and effect in measuring Tambora’s impact on the global commons of the nineteenth century. Volcanic strife traveled great distances and via obscure agents. But it is only by tracing such “teleconnections”—a guiding principle of today’s climate and ecological sciences—that the worldwide tragedy of Tambora can be rescued from its two-century oblivion.
Climate change is hard to see and no less difficult to imagine. After a day’s climb through the dense forests of Sumbawa Island, drenched in tropical rains, I almost didn’t succeed in seeing at firsthand the great Tambora’s evacuated peak. Then, at daybreak on the second morning, the clouds suddenly lifted, and we were able to complete our ascent along the treeless ridges. Nearing the summit, we clambered over flat pool tables of tan, serrated rock and left our boot prints in the black volcanic sand. Almost without warning, we found ourselves at the rim of a great inverted dome of earth, with sheer rock walls leading down to a pearl-green lake a kilometer below. My camera whirred as puffclouds of sulfur performed lazy inversions in the still, separate universe of Tambora’s yawning caldera. Its six-kilometer diameter might as well have been a thousand. My swimming eyes performed no better than my camera in taking measure of the volcano’s unhealed intestinal canyon, let alone in imagining its once pristine peak a mile above me in what was
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