Two hundred years ago, a grandiose natural event took place on earth - the eruption of the Tambora volcano, which affected the climate of the entire planet and claimed tens of thousands of human lives.
The geographical location of the volcano
Tambora Volcano is located in the northern part of the Indonesian island of Sumbawa, on the Sangar Peninsula. You need to immediately clarify that Tambora is not the largest volcano in that region, in Indonesia there are about 400 volcanoes, and the largest of them, Kerinci, rises in Sumatra.
The Sangar Peninsula itself is 36 km wide and 86 km long. The height of the Tambora volcano itself by April 1815 reached 4300 meters, the eruption of the Tambora volcano in 1815 led to a reduction in its height to the current 2700 meters.
Eruption start
After three years of increasing activity, the Tambora volcano on April 5, 1815 finally woke up when the first eruption occurred, which lasted 33 hours. The explosion of Tambora volcano generated a column of smoke and ash, rising to a height of about 33 km. However, the nearby population did not leave their homes, despite the volcano, in Indonesia, as already mentioned, volcanic activity was not unusual.
It is noteworthy that at first those people who were away were more frightened. The thunder of a volcano explosion was heard on the island of Java in the densely populated city of Yogyakarta. Residents decided that they heard the thunder of guns. In this regard, the troops were put on alert, and ships began to ply along the coast in search of a ship in distress. However, the ash that appeared the next day suggested the true reason for the sound of explosions.
The Tambora volcano maintained a certain calm state for several days, until April 10. The fact is that this eruption did not lead to the outflow of lava, it froze in the vent, contributing to the buildup of pressure and provoking a new, even more terrible eruption, which happened.
On April 10, at about 10 a.m., a new eruption occurred, this time a column of ash and smoke rose to a height of about 44 km. The rumble of thunder from the explosion was already heard on the island of Sumatra. At the same time, the place of the eruption (Tambora volcano) on the map relative to Sumatra is very far away, at a distance of 2, 500 km.
According to eyewitnesses, by seven in the evening of the same day, the intensity of the eruption had increased, and by eight in the evening a hail of stones fell on the island, the diameter of which reached 20 cm, then the ash fell again. By ten in the evening, three fire columns rising into the sky above the volcano merged into one, and the Tambora volcano turned into a mass of “liquid fire”. About seven rivers of red-hot lava began to spread in all directions around the volcano, destroying the entire population of the Sangar peninsula. Even in the sea, lava spread 40 km from the island, and the characteristic smell could be felt even in Batavia (the old name of the capital of Jakarta), located at a distance of 1300 km.
Eruption end
Two days later, on April 12, Tambora Volcano was still active. Clouds of ash have already spread to the western shores of Java and the south of the island of Sulawesi, which is 900 km from the volcano. According to residents, it was impossible to see the dawn until 10 a.m., even the birds did not begin to sing until almost noon. The eruption ended only by April 15, and the ashes did not settle until April 17. The volcanic vent formed after the eruption reached 6 km in diameter and 600 meters in depth.
Victims of Tambora Volcano
It is estimated that about 11 thousand people died on the island during the eruption, but the number of victims was not limited to this. Later, as a result of hunger and epidemics on the island of Sumbawa and the neighboring island of Lombok, about 50 thousand people died, and the cause of death was the tsunami that rose after the eruption, whose effect spread hundreds of kilometers around.
Disaster physics
When the eruption of the Tambora volcano in 1815, an amount of energy of 800 megatons was released, which can be compared with the explosion of 50 thousand atomic bombs, such as dropped on Hiroshima. This eruption was eight times stronger than the well-known eruption of Vesuvius and four times more powerful than the eruption of the volcano Krakatau that happened later.
The eruption of Tambora volcano lifted 160 cubic kilometers of solid matter into the air, the ash thickness on the island reached 3 meters. Sailors who set sail at that time, for several more years met on their way islands from pumice, reaching a size of five kilometers.
Incredible volumes of ash and sulfur-containing gases reached the stratosphere, rising to a height of more than 40 km. Ashes covered the sun from all living things, located at a distance of 600 km around the volcano. And around the world there was a haze of orange hue and blood-red sunsets.
“A year without summer”
Millions of tons of sulfur dioxide released during the eruption reached Ecuador in the same year 1815, and the next year caused climate change in Europe, which was then called the “year without summer”.
In many countries of Europe, brown and even reddish snow fell then, in the summer in the Swiss Alps there was snow almost every week, and the average temperature in Europe was 2-4 degrees lower. The same decrease in temperature was observed in America.
Around the world, a poor harvest has led to higher food prices and hunger, which, along with epidemics, claimed 200, 000 lives.
Comparative characteristics of the eruption
The eruption that befell the Tambora volcano (1815) became unique in the history of mankind; it was assigned the seventh category (out of eight possible) on the volcanic hazard scale. Scientists were able to determine that over the past 10 thousand years there have been four such eruptions. Before the Tambora volcano, a similar catastrophe happened in 1257 on the neighboring island of Lombok, on the site of the volcano’s vent there is now Segara Anak Lake with an area of 11 sq. Km (pictured).
The first visit to the volcano after the eruption
The first traveler to the island to visit the frozen volcano of Tambora was the Swiss botanist Heinrich Zollinger, who led a team of researchers to study the ecosystem created as a result of the natural cataclysm. This happened in 1847, 32 years after the eruption. Nevertheless, smoke still continued to rise from the crater, and researchers moving along the frozen crust fell into the still hot volcanic ash when it broke.
But scientists have already noted the birth of a new life on the incinerated earth, where in some places the foliage of plants has already begun to turn green. And even at an altitude of more than 2 thousand meters, casuarines (coniferous plants resembling ivy) were found.
As further observation showed, by 1896 56 species of birds lived on the slopes of the volcano, while one of them (Lophozosterops dohertyi) was first discovered there.
