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A Year Without a Summer, 1816

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The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History

Abstract

The April 1815 eruption of the Tambora volcano on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa turned 1816 into the most recent and most memorable “year without a summer.” The Tambora eruption was among the largest in recent history. It brought dramatic climatic and human consequences, which were closely observed around the world. The bicentennial anniversary of the eruption and the “year without a summer” became the occasion for many new studies of this already well-researched event. Thus, Tambora and its aftermath provide a valuable case study in volcanic weather and its historical impacts.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    E.g., Harington, 1992; Oppenheimer, 2003; Klingaman and Klingaman, 2013; Wood, 2014; Behringer, 2015; Luterbacher and Pfister, 2015.

  2. 2.

    Lavigne et al., 2013. For a chronology of major eruptions over the past 2000 years, see Sigl et al., 2015.

  3. 3.

    Sigurdsson and Carey, 1992.

  4. 4.

    Wood, 2014.

  5. 5.

    Wanner et al., 2008.

  6. 6.

    Chenoweth, 2001; Gennaretti et al., 2014; Anet et al., 2014; Cole-Dai et al., 2009; Stoffel et al., 2015.

  7. 7.

    Wegmann et al., 2014.

  8. 8.

    Klingaman and Klingaman, 2013, 110.

  9. 9.

    Wilson, 1992, 545.

  10. 10.

    Post, 1977.

  11. 11.

    Pfister, 1992.

  12. 12.

    Shelley, 1987, 116.

  13. 13.

    Grove, 1988, 144.

  14. 14.

    See especially accounts in Wood, 2014.

  15. 15.

    Krämer, 2015.

  16. 16.

    Krämer, 2013.

  17. 17.

    Wheeler, 2016, 110–11.

  18. 18.

    Kington, 1992.

  19. 19.

    Wood, 2014, 176.

  20. 20.

    Klingaman and Klingaman, 2013, 204–08; Wood, 2014, 171–98.

  21. 21.

    Wood, 2014.

  22. 22.

    Andrea Kiss, personal communication. On the historical climatology of the Carpathian Basin, see Kiss et al., 2011.

  23. 23.

    Trigo et al., 2009.

  24. 24.

    Post, 1977; see also Wood, 2014, Chap. 9.

  25. 25.

    Post, 1977, 13.

  26. 26.

    Jefferson, 1899, 64, quoted in Klingaman and Klingaman, 2013, 160.

  27. 27.

    Scoresby, 2003, 45–46, quoted in Wood, 2014, 125.

  28. 28.

    See Wood, 2014.

  29. 29.

    Luterbacher and Pfister, 2015, 246–47; Grabbe, Stuttgart, 2001.

  30. 30.

    Mussey, 1949; Klingaman and Klingaman, 2013.

  31. 31.

    Wilson, 1992, 548.

  32. 32.

    Klingaman and Klingaman, 2013.

  33. 33.

    Zhang et al., 1992, 428–36.

  34. 34.

    Cao et al., 2012; Wood, 2014; Gao et al., 2017.

  35. 35.

    Mikami and Tsukamura, 1992, 462–65.

  36. 36.

    Schneider et al., 2009.

  37. 37.

    Wood, 2014, 85–90.

  38. 38.

    Bodenmann et al., 2011.

  39. 39.

    Wood, 2014, 52–55, et passim.

  40. 40.

    Early examples include: Boia, 2005; Vasak, 2007; Behringer et al., 2005. On climate changes and literature, see Trexler and Johns-Putra, 2011.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of History, Oeschger Centre for Climate Change, Bern, Switzerland

    Christian Pfister

  2. Department of History, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

    Sam White

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  1. Christian Pfister
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  2. Sam White
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

    Sam White

  2. Institute of History, Oeschger Centre for Climate Change, Bern, Switzerland

    Christian Pfister

  3. Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany

    Franz Mauelshagen

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Pfister, C., White, S. (2018). A Year Without a Summer, 1816. In: White, S., Pfister, C., Mauelshagen, F. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43020-5_35

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43020-5_35

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