{"id":106283,"date":"2026-10-26T15:17:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T19:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.adviews.info\/news\/?p=106283"},"modified":"2026-10-26T15:17:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T19:17:09","slug":"volcanoes-lurk-behind-the-scenes-of-human-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.adviews.info\/news\/?p=106283","title":{"rendered":"Volcanoes lurk behind the scenes of human history"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe bright sun was extinguish\u2019d \u2026 and the icy earth swung blind and blackening in the moonless air.\u201d These words from Lord Byron\u2019s 1816 poem Darkness<\/em> evoke a hellish apocalypse.\u00a0But Byron may have been inspired by the fallout of a real cataclysm \u2014 one that happened half a world away.<\/p>\n

Mount Tambora, in present-day Indonesia, blew its top in 1815. More than 71,000 people in the vicinity died. And climate-cooling aerosols from the eruption ushered in extreme weather the following years in far-flung places. Cold weather in the summer of 1816, sometimes with frosts and snow, destroyed corn in New England, rice and buckwheat in China and wheat, oats and potatoes in Ireland. In some places, the rising cost of bread sparked protests and riots. The circumstances may have helped spread typhus. Some called 1816 \u201cthe year without a summer,\u201d others \u201cthe year of the beggars.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Like Tambora, volcanoes, and the cooling they cause, may be an underappreciated geologic force at times moving behind the scenes of human history.<\/p>\n

\"An
A stamp from Indonesia shows a smoking Mount Tambora. Tambora\u2019s 1815 eruption killed some 71,000 people in the area. Climate cooling aerosols from the blast ushered in cool temperatures and extreme weather in the following years, leading to crop failures and the spread of disease.<\/span>Post of Indonesia (Wikimedia Commons)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThese climatic impacts of the Tambora eruption were recorded without any knowledge that this had anything to do with an eruption,\u201d says Clive Oppenheimer, a volcanologist at the University of Cambridge.<\/p>\n

While Tambora is the most well-studied eruption in history, others have also rattled the planet. Oppenheimer and his colleagues analyzed 38 large eruptions in the 2026 Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences<\/em>. Their work pulled together studies linking the geologic events and their effects on climate with their potential societal fallout in food systems, the economy, unrest, culture and religion. The locations and exact timing of the eruptions that spurred some notable cold spurts aren\u2019t known. But understanding how the events impacted the climate, environment and society can offer clues to the past, including how people coped with climate stress.<\/p>\n