1816 was the Année without summer , during which severe disturbances of the climate destroyed harvests in septentrional Europe, in the East of American Canada and in the North-East of the United States. The historian John D. Post sees there “the last great crisis of subsistence in the western world. ” It seems that it was caused by a volcanic Hiver.

Description

The unusual climatic disturbances of 1816 had the greatest effect on the American North-East, the News England, the seaboard provinces of Canada, Newfoundland and the Northern Europe. Usually, the end of spring and the summer in the North-East of the United States are relatively soft: the temperatures (by counting at the same time those of the day and the night) make approximately 20-25 °C on average and seldom fall below 5 °C. The snow of summer is extremely rare, although in May of the gusts of snow can occur sometimes.

In May 1816, however, freezing destroyed the majority of harvests which had been planted and in June two great blizzards in the East of Canada and in New England resulted in many deaths. It is almost a foot of snow which was observed in the town of Quebec at the beginning of June. In July and August, one saw ice on the lakes and the rivers as far towards the south as in Pennsylvania. Fast and extreme differences in temperature were usual and from the temperatures normal or close to the normal in summer, going up to 35 °C, could fall below zero in a few hours. Even if the farmers in the South of New England succeeded in all the same bringing some harvests to maturity, the price of corn and other cereals assembled in an alarming way. The oats, for example, passed to 92 ¢ the bushel against 12 ¢ the previous year.

Causes

One estimates now that these disordered states were due to volcanic eruptions produced from April 5th to 15th 1815 by the Mount Tambora on the island of Sumbawa in the Indies Occidentales Dutchwomen (today the Indonesia), ejecting in the roadbases of the atmosphere of the immense quantities of volcanic dust.

Other volcanos were in activity on close dates:

• the Sulfur mine on Saint-Vincent in the the Caribbean in 1812

• Mayon with the Filipino in 1814

These other eruptions had already produced a substantial quantity of airborne dust. As it often arrives following a massive volcanic eruption, the temperatures fell into the whole world since less solar light managed to cross the atmosphere.

Consequences

Following this series of volcanic eruptions, harvests in the areas referred to above had suffered during several years; the death-blow was carried in 1815 with the eruption of Tambora. In America, much about historians speak about the “Year without summer” like essential motivation for the movement towards the West and the fast settlement of what is now the West and the center of the State of New York and American Middle-West. In New England a great number of inhabitants were victims of this year and they are tens of thousands of farmers who left for septentrional Middle-West (which constituted the Territories of the North-West then) where they hoped to find a ground richer and better conditions of growth for the vegetation. Europe, which was not restored yet Napoleonean wars, underwent a food crisis. Riots of subsistence burst in Great Britain and in France and the stores of grains were plundered. Violence was the worst in Switzerland, country private of access to the sea, where the famine forced the government to declare the state of emergency. Storms of a rare violence, an abnormal rainfall with overflow of the large rivers of Europe (including the Rhine) are allotted to the event, as was freezing which has occurred in August 1816. Documentary of the BBC carried out in Switzerland estimated that death rates in 1816 were this year twice higher than the average with on the whole two hundred and thousand dead.

The eruption of Tambora also gave in Hungary a maroon example of snow. Italy knew something of analog, with red snow which fell throughout the year. It is believed that the cause was the volcanic ash contained in the atmosphere.

In China, the exceptionally low temperatures of the summer and waterspouts were disastrous for the production of rice in the province of Yunnan in South-west, with like result a general famine. Strong Shuangcheng, today in the province of Heilongjiang, announced that fields had been devastated by freezing and that consequently the conscripts deserted. Snowfalls in summer occurred in various places in the provinces of Jiangxi and Anhui, both in the South of the country. In Formosa, however under a tropical climate, one saw snow with Hsinchu and Miaoli, and gel with Changhua.

Simple: Year without has Summer

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