The epic volcano eruption that led to the ‘Year Without a Summer’

Two hundred years ago, a massive volcanic eruption in Indonesia rocked the globe. Ash shot miles into the sky when Mount Tambora exploded. A wall of hot gas and rocks sped down the mountainside and destroyed the city of Tambora. The ash that was lofted into the atmosphere spread far across the Northern Hemisphere and left the Earth in the midst of a year without a summer.

Volcanic eruptions are climate wild cards. No eruption illustrates that more than Mount Tambora, which blew its top in April 1815. Tambora’s blasts and the tsunamis they caused killed an estimated 92,000 people, including those who starved to death because the explosion of debris killed livestock and crops. READ MORE