“THIS END OF THE WORLD WEATHER” - Tambora: The Eruption that Changed the World - page 27

across the United States and the globe as probably the most tumultuous planetary sequence
of extreme weather events since 1816. 15 That Masters, a preeminent meteorologist and his-
torian of our own era of climate deterioration, would consider 1816 the baseline example for
global “extreme weather” in the twenty-first century impresses on us the historical scale of
the storms that inspired Mary Shelley and her talented circle that legendary summer on the
shores of Lake Geneva. Indeed, in the dozen millennia since the retreat of the glaciers opened
the door to human civilization, people have rarely, if ever, seen weather like it.
The folkloric history of 1816's extreme weather, especially in Europe and North America,
looms large in the minds of meteorologists. That the myriad legends of the “Year without
a Summer” have some statistical basis in the temperature record is owed—at least in Eng-
land—to a man with a strong claim to the title of “father of meteorology”: the austere Quaker
from Tottenham, Luke Howard. Howard's landmark publication, Essay on the Modification of
Clouds (1803), introduced the basic cloud classifications—cirrus, nimbus, and so forth—still
in use today. The essay inspired fan mail from the German poet-scientist Goethe, while in
1813 Thomas Forster credited Howard with “the daily increasing attention devoted to this
science.” 16
The first wave of modern European interest in meteorology, with Luke Howard at the van-
guard, coincided with the historically cold and cloudy decade of the 1810s. 17 From 1807 to
1819, Howard maintained the first professional almanac of British weather conditions, com-
plete with detailed statistical tables and prolific commentary. Its very title, The Climate of
London , proclaimed the first principle of modern climatology: that “climate” is the aggregate
of weather conditions in a particular region over time , to be distinguished—as a legitimate
science—from the vulgar gossip, anecdote, and superstition that traditionally surround the
weather (a discourse as “dreary” as the weather itself is so often complained to be).
Howard's Climate of London offers hard evidence of the altered weather patterns across
western Europe produced by Tambora's eruption. By the first week of January 1816, Howard
was recording “gales” and “violent storms of wind and rain” in London and elsewhere on
a near daily basis. Provincial correspondence brought accounts of never-before-seen storm
activity. The winter also brought the first indications of the historical cold temperatures that
would afflict the country through 1816 and beyond. “I had … opportunity of observing at
Tottenham,” Howard wrote,
the intense cold of the 9-10th of the second month, 1816 … a gale from the North East had
precipitated in snow the moisture which previously abounded…. So cold was the surface on
the 9th at noon, that a bright sun, contrary to its usual effect in our climate, produced not
the least moisture in the snow, the polished plates of which retaining their form, refracted
the rays with all the brilliancy of dew drops. 18
The daytime temperature on February 9, 1816, never exceeded 20°F, slipping that night to 5
below zero and remaining there for twelve hours. It was a phenomenon of cold “not uncom-
mon” in higher latitudes, Howard commented, but truly remarkable for the south of England.
The sun shone but had seemingly lost its power of warmth.
The subsequent summer of 1816—that would live in infamy—brought a continuation of
storms, gales, and cold conditions. Amazed locals reported snows on the summit of Helvellyn
in northern England in July and snowdrifts five feet deep in the north of Scotland. Picking up