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Development of global average temperatures during the last 1000 years. A significant drop down shortly after 1800 is visible in the majority of concurrent reconstructions.

The Year Without a Summer, also known as the Poverty Year or Eighteen hundred and froze to death, was 1816, in which severe summer climate abnormalities destroyed crops in Northern Europe, the American Northeast and eastern Canada^[1][2]. Historian John D. Post has called this "the last great subsistence crisis in the Western world."^[3]

The unusual climatic aberrations of 1816 had the greatest effect on the American northeast, the Canadian Maritimes, Newfoundland, and northern Europe. Typically, the late spring and summer of the northeastern U.S. are relatively stable: temperatures (average of both day and night) average about 68–77 °F (20–25 °C), and rarely fall below 41 °F (5 °C). Summer snow is an extreme rarity, though May flurries sometimes occur.

In May of 1816^[4], however, frost killed off most of the crops that had been planted, and in June two large snowstorms in eastern Canada and New England resulted in many human deaths. Nearly a foot of snow was observed in Quebec City in early June. In July and August, lake and river ice were observed as far south as Pennsylvania. Rapid, dramatic temperature swings were common, with temperatures sometimes reverting from normal or above-normal summer temperatures as high as 95 °F (35 °C) to near-freezing within hours. Even though farmers south of New England did succeed in bringing some crops to maturity, maize (corn) and other grain prices rose dramatically. Oats, for example, rose from 12¢ a bushel the previous year to 92¢ a bushel.

It is now generally thought that the aberrations occurred because of the 5 April – 15 April 1815 volcanic eruptions of Mount Tambora^[5][6] on the island of Sumbawa in the Dutch East Indies (modern-day Indonesia) which ejected immense amounts of volcanic dust into the upper atmosphere.

Other volcanoes were active during the same time frame:

• La Soufrière on Saint Vincent in the Caribbean in 1812
• Mayon in the Philippines in 1814

These other eruptions had already built up a substantial amount of atmospheric dust. As is common following a massive volcanic eruption, temperatures fell worldwide owing to less sunlight passing through the atmosphere.

As a consequence of the series of volcanic eruptions, crops in the above cited areas had been poor for several years; the final blow came in 1815 with the eruption of Tambora. In America, many historians cite the "Year Without a Summer" as a primary motivation for the western movement and rapid settlement of what is now Central and Western New York and the American Midwest. Many New Englanders were wiped out by the year, and tens of thousands struck out for the richer soil and better growing conditions of the Upper Midwest (then the Northwest Territory). (A specific instance of this was when the family of Joseph Smith, eventual founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, moved from Sharon, Vermont, to Palmyra, New York, in western New York State after several crop failures.) There has been some speculation that the Church's emphasis on a one year's supply of food storage might also be attributed to this event.

Europe, still recuperating from the Napoleonic Wars, suffered from food shortages. Food riots broke out in Britain and France and grain warehouses were looted. The violence was worst in landlocked Switzerland, where famine caused the government to declare a national emergency. Huge storms, abnormal rainfall and floodings of the major rivers of Europe (including the Rhine) are attributed to the event, as was the frost setting in during August 1816. A BBC documentary using figures compiled in Switzerland estimated that fatality rates in 1816 were twice that of average years, giving an approximate European fatality total of 200,000 deaths.

The eruption of Tambora also caused Hungary to experience brown snow. Italy experienced something similar, with red snow falling throughout the year. The cause of this is believed to have been volcanic ash in the atmosphere.

In China, unusually low temperatures in summer and fall devastated rice production in Yunnan province in the southwest, resulting in widespread famine. Fort Shuangcheng, now in Heilongjiang province, reported fields disrupted by frost and conscripts deserting as a result. Summer snowfall was reported in various locations in Jiangxi and Anhui provinces, both in the south of the country. In Taiwan, which has a tropical climate, snow was reported in Hsinchu and Miaoli, while frost was reported in Changhua.^[7]

Hong Kong sunset circa 1992 after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo.

In July 1816 "incessant rainfall" during that "wet, ungenial summer" forced Mary Shelley, John William Polidori and their friends to stay indoors for much of their Swiss holiday. They decided to have a contest, seeing who could write the scariest story, leading Shelley to write Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus and Polidori to write The Vampyre.

High levels of ash in the atmosphere led to unusually spectacular sunsets during this period, a feature celebrated in the paintings of J. M. W. Turner. (A similar phenomenon was observed after the 1883 Krakatoa eruption, and on the West Coast of the United States following the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines.)

The lack of oats to feed horses may have inspired the German inventor Karl Drais to research new ways of horseless transportation, which led to the invention of the Draisine or velocipede. This was the archetype of the modern bicycle (leading later to the motorcycle) and a step towards mechanized personal transport.^[8]

• Climate changes of 535–536 have been linked to the effects of a volcanic eruption, probably at Krakatoa.
• Kuwae, a Pacific volcano, has been implicated in events surrounding the Fall of Constantinople in 1453.
• Laki, in Iceland, caused major fatalities in Europe, 1783–84.

1. ^ http://new-brunswick.net/Saint_John/timedate.html
2. ^ http://dsp-psd.communication.gc.ca/Collection/En56-119-3-1997-1E.pdf
3. ^ http://www.smithsonianmagazine.com/issues/2002/july/blast.php?page=2
4. ^ http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/history/1816.htm
5. ^ http://www.indodigest.com/indonesia-special-article-19.html
6. ^ http://www.bellrock.org.uk/misc/misc_year.htm
7. ^ http://www.igsnrr.ac.cn/lwzzImg/1161151232919.pdf
8. ^ http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/mg18524841.900.html

• BBC Timewatch documentary: Year Without Summer, Cicada Films (BBC2, 27 May 2005)
• Henry & Elizabeth Stommel: Volcano Weather: The Story of 1816, the Year without a Summer, Seven Seas Press, Newport RI 1983 ISBN 0-915160-71-4
• Hans-Erhard Lessing: Automobilitaet: Karl Drais und die unglaublichen Anfaenge, Leipzig 2003

• "Brimstone and Bicycles" by Mick Hamer of New Scientist, 29 Jan 2005
• Eighteen Hundred and Froze To Death