Mount Tambora and the Year Without a Summer

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Mount Tambora is a large stratovolcano located on the island of Sumbawa, Indonesia. It lies approximately 210 miles north of the Java Trench and is flanked to the north and south by oceanic crust. Its current summit elevation is around 9,350 feet (Smithsonian Institute). To the south-east of the volcano lies the Sanggar peninsula, which is a part of Tambora. There are two cities, Dompu and Clima, and three concentrations of villages near the mountain slope: Sanggar, Doro Peti and Pesanggrahan, and Calabai.

Figure 1. Map of Mount Tambora and Sumbawa

Mount Tambora is best known for the eruption that occurred in April 1815. The eruption was so large it ranked 7 out of 8 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index scale. The number of deaths due to the eruption alone was estimated at 11,000 with an additional 49,000 by post-eruption famine and epidemic diseases (Tanguy, Ribiere, Scarth, & Tjetjep, 1998). A more recent estimation placed the total number of deaths at 71,000 (Oppenheimer, 2003).

So what events led up to this violent eruption? A scientist used qualitative and quantitative data to reconstruct a timeline. Three years prior to the April 1815 years the volcano began to rumble and generate a dark cloud around the summit. Then in the early evening of April 5th 1815 there was a moderate-sized eruption. The detonations sounded like the discharge of cannons and could be heard as far away as Ternate, 1400km away (Stothers, 1984). A man by the name of Sir Stamford Raffles heard these sounds wrote:

“The first explosions were heard on this Island in the evening of 5 April, they were noticed in every quarter, and continued at intervals until the following day. The noise was, in the first instance, almost universally attribut...

... middle of paper ...

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Stothers, R. (1984, June 15). The great Tambora eruption in 1815 and its aftermath. Retrieved May 3, 2011, from Academic OneFile: http://find.galegroup.com.ezproxy.lib.apsu.edu/gtx/infomark.do?&contentSet=IAC-Documents&type=retrieve&tabID=T002&prodId=AONE&docId=A3309276&source=gale&srcprod=AONE&userGroupName=tel_a_apsu&version=1.0

Tanguy, J.-C., Ribiere, C., Scarth, A., & Tjetjep, W. (1998). Victims from volcanic eruptions: a revised database. Bulletin of Volcanology , 137-144.

University of Notre Dame. (2006). tambora expolosion.jpg. Retrieved May 3, 2011, from University of Notre Dame: http://ocw.nd.edu/physics/nuclear-warfare/images-1/tambora-explosion.jpg/view

Wickens, S. (2004, May 14). 1816- The year with a summer. Retrieved May 3, 2011, from Scribd: http://www.scribd.com/doc/323747/1816-Eruption-of-Mt-Tambora-The-year-without-summer

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