Earth’s “year without summer” in 1816: volcanic eruptions were still the culprit, leading to a great famine in Yunnan
On January 15, local time, the island nation of Tonga, located in the Southern Hemisphere, 1,770 kilometers away from New Zealand and about 2,000 kilometers away from Australia, experienced a violent volcanic eruption with a level of VEI-6.
According to satellite detection data, the volcanic ash has rushed to an altitude of about 28 kilometers and entered the stratosphere. The loud noise made by the volcanic eruption can be heard even as far away as Australia. Its comprehensive scale is currently greater than that of the Pinatubo volcano eruption in the Philippines 30 years ago.
When such a huge amount of volcanic ash erupts into the atmosphere, these volcanic ash will inevitably drift westward along with the equatorial westerly belt. Not only will it displace nearby active tropical cyclones to the surrounding areas, but the volcanic ash will gradually permeate the global atmosphere. , blocking part of the sunlight will reduce surface heating, causing abnormal climate phenomena, the main one being large-scale global cooling.
For this reason, many people are worried that cooling will lead to a "year without summer" on the earth.
In fact, this kind of worry is not groundless. In 1816, the earth once experienced a climate catastrophe caused by a volcanic eruption, and its destructiveness was appalling. The term "The Year Without a Summer" originated from this time when it was first used.
In 1815, Mount Tambora in Indonesia suddenly erupted.
The eruption of Mount Tambora is the most violent volcanic eruption event recorded in human history. The volcanic eruption index reached VEI-7.
Starting from April 5, 1815, the eruption of the volcano continued until mid-July of the same year. The violent volcanic eruption caused the Tambora volcano, which was originally 4,100 meters above sea level, to collapse in a short time. Within a short time, the altitude dropped to only about 2850 meters.
Due to the violent eruption, the top of the entire volcano formed a giant crater with a diameter of more than 6,000 meters and a depth of about 700 meters. About 70 billion tons of mountain mass disappeared.
When Tambora volcano erupted, the loud noise could be heard 2,500 kilometers away, releasing 50,000 times the energy of the Hiroshima atomic bomb, ejecting 140 billion tons of magma and more than 600 tons of magma. Billions of tons of volcanic ash. The volcanic ash gradually becomes thinner from near to far, but 400 kilometers away from the center of the volcano, the accumulation thickness is still more than 20 centimeters. It can be seen that the erupted volcanic ash is amazing.
Among them, more than 17 billion tons of volcanic ash was sprayed into the altitude of hundreds of thousands of kilometers, which can be said to cover the sky and the sun. At that time, more than 71,000 local residents died directly due to the eruption of Tambora volcano.
But the real disaster caused by the Tambora eruption was not fully demonstrated until the following year.
In the feudal society of ancient China, due to the underdevelopment of science, many meteorological abnormalities were attributed to punishment from God. For example, "Flying Snow in June" is a taboo among the people, who believe that there is great injustice in the world.
In 1816 (the 21st year of Jiaqing), China could be said to have experienced extreme weather once in hundreds of years. Historical records: "In the eighth month of the lunar calendar, the weather suddenly felt like winter." It starts to snow in Anhui, Jiangxi and other places in June of the lunar calendar.
The culprit of all this is not the so-called "punishment from heaven" in folk superstition at all, but the eruption of Indonesia's Tambora volcano in mid-1815.
At that time, a huge amount of volcanic ash was ejected into the atmosphere. As time went by and it spread under the action of air currents, it almost covered and obscured the global atmosphere. Although it was not directly detectable with the naked eye, it gave a lot of heat from the sun to Blocking it out caused the earth to cool down. According to scientific research estimates at that time, the global average temperature dropped by up to 0.7 degrees Celsius.
As a result, in the winter of 1815, the northern hemisphere ushered in the coldest year since records began in 1400. The extremely cold weather caused the southern areas of the Qing Dynasty to be covered with thick snow. In this kind of weather, a large number of livestock froze to death.
I thought that winter would be over, but in 1816 people discovered that things were far from being as simple as imagined. Winter refused to leave. In March and April, it was still very cold. It’s a very “weird” summer. Because of the consistently low temperatures, this year is known as the "year without summer."
Low temperature weather made it impossible to sow crops. Without food, famine began to occur. At that time, Yunnan, which was least resistant to extreme cold weather, became the hardest hit area.
The poet Li Yuyang described the tragic situation in this way in "Sigh of Selling Children":
In order to fill their stomachs, people have gone to the point of selling their children and daughters. In many places, hungry wolves are everywhere. It is known as the "Jiaqing Great Famine" in history.
An even more unusual weather phenomenon is that it was sunny and warm weather at the beginning. Due to the huge temperature difference between regions, the temperature was in the twenties and thirties degrees the first day. The strong wind blew one night, and the next day it became cold. It can drop to below 0 degrees.
In 1816 alone, more than 860,000 people died in China due to famine caused by climate disasters. To a certain extent, this abnormal climate change caused the Qing Dynasty's national destiny to take a sharp turn, from prosperity to decline.
The climate anomaly caused by the volcanic eruption in 1815 affected not only China, but almost all countries in the northern hemisphere were hardest hit, especially Europe.
In Europe in 1816, the war against Napoleon had just ended, and various countries were still in a state of recovery. People's lives were already very difficult, and sudden changes took people by surprise.
Many places are still frozen in July and August. Food shortage also became the most common phenomenon at that time. Grain grabbing occurred in various places, and the situation in Switzerland was the most serious.
Countries such as the United Kingdom, Wales, and Ireland have also experienced large-scale livestock deaths, crop failures, and famine. In Germany, frost occurred in August, and many areas maintain sub-zero temperatures all year round. In the extreme weather at that time, nearly 200,000 people froze to death in Europe alone.
Whether it is the eruption of the Tonga volcano or the Tambora volcano, it seems to illustrate a problem to all mankind. In the face of nature, humans are still very small.
Do you think that the eruption of Tonga volcano will make the earth repeat the mistakes of the "year without summer"?