“THIS END OF THE WORLD WEATHER” - Tambora: The Eruption that Changed the World - page 30

much like the lightning strike passage in Frankenstein , first published the month of this mem-
orable storm:
The effects of the late thunderstorm [were] the most extraordinary that ever occurred in this
county…. The tree in question has long been admired for its girth and noble proportions,
being more than 100 feet high and nearly 14 feet in girth; but it exists no longer, having
been literally shivered to pieces by the electric fluid. Some of the fragments lie 260 feet from
the spot, and others bestrew the ground in every direction, presenting altogether a scene of
desolated vegetation, easier to be conceived than described. 23
The following month—Tambora's three-year anniversary—another bizarre spring storm
raged across the environs of London, unroofing houses and blowing down walls. On Hamp-
stead Heath—sometime residence of the Shelleys, Coleridge, Keats, and painter Con-
stable—dozens of trees were blown up from their roots.
The litany of climate change destruction post-Tambora is exhausting to read and almost
numbingly repetitive. So many trees blown down, fields flooded, and crop-killing frosts and
snows. But unlike twenty-first-century climate change, which has no end in sight but only
a relentless acceleration, Tambora's weather emergency did eventually pass. By June 1818,
Luke Howard was able to report “clear hot sunshine” that brought with it the warmest stretch
of weather since 1808, and “a period unequalled in dryness since the beginning of 1810.”
Walking the semi-rural environs of Tottenham, Howard observed “the deeper green of the
foliage and the richer colour of many flowers.”24 24 With Tambora's global dust cloud lift-
ing, it seemed like the refreshment of the world. The greenness of leaves and flowers at full
blush—everyday glories almost forgotten—now resumed for Howard their wonted niche in
the cherished visible world. Then in the autumn, the tender nasturtiums and horse chestnuts
returned like old friends, untormented by early frosts. What a soul-lifting sight it must have
been for the observant Quaker, attentive to signs of God's mercy.
EUROPE'S LAST FAMINE
Tambora's shaping influence on human history does not derive from extreme weather events
considered in isolation but in the myriad environmental impacts of a climate system gone
haywire. As I have argued, the popular moniker awarded 1816, the “Year without a Sum-
mer,” sounds altogether too benign, no more than the inconvenience of donning an overcoat
in July, when, in fact, “no summer” meant “no food” for millions of people. As a result of the
prolonged poor weather, crop yields across the British Isles and western Europe plummeted
by 75% and more in 1816-17. Tambora's calling card in Germany, where it is remembered
as the “Year of the Beggar”—or in Switzerland, as “L'Année de la misère” and “Das Hunger-
jahr”—better captures the atmosphere of social crisis during the extreme weather onslaught
of 1815-18. In the first summer of Tambora's cold, wet, and windy regime—the “atmospheric
sarabande” of 1816—the European harvest languished miserably. Farmers left their crops in
the field as long as they dared, hoping some fraction might mature in late-coming sunshine.
But the longed-for warm spell never arrived and at last, in October, they surrendered. Potato
crops were left to rot, while entire fields of barley and oats lay blanketed in snow until the
following spring.