Weather Eye with John Maunder

As discussed in a previous Weathereye, 1816 was ‘The year without a summer', caused by dust from Mount Tambora in Indonesia shrouding the earth after it erupted in early-April 1815.

And with the sunlight blocked 1816 did not have a normal summer.

In Switzerland, the damp and dismal summer of 1816 led to the creation of a significant literary work.

A group of writers, including Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and his future wife, challenged each other to write dark tales inspired by the gloomy and chilly weather.

During the miserable weather Mary Shelley wrote her classic novel ‘Frankenstein'.

The Albany Advertiser went on to propose some theories about why the weather was so bizarre.

The mention of sunspots is interesting, as sunspots had been seen by astronomers.

And many people, to this day, wonder about what, if any effect, sunspots may have had on the weird weather.

What's also fascinating is the newspaper article from 1816 proposes such events be studied, so people can learn what is going on. For example:

'Many seem disposed to charge the peculiarities of the season, the present year, upon the spots on the sun.

'If the dryness of the season has in any measure depended on the latter cause, it has not operated uniformly in different places – the spots have been visible in Europe, as well as in the United States and yet in some parts of Europe, as we have already remarked, they have been drenched with rain.

'Without undertaking to discuss, much less to decide, such a learned subject as this, we should be glad if proper pains were taken to ascertain, by regular journals of the weather from year to year, the state of the seasons in this country and Europe, as well as the general state of health in both quarters of the globe.

'We think the facts might be collected, and the comparison made, without much difficulty; and when once made, that it would be of great advantage to medical men, and medical science.”

Today, we now know volcanoes can pose many hazards. One hazard is volcanic ash can be a threat to jet aircraft where ash particles can be melted by the high operating temperature.

The melted particles then adhere to the turbine blades and alter their shape, disrupting the operation of the turbine.

Large eruptions can affect temperature, as ash and droplets of sulphuric acid obscure the sun and cool the Earth's lower atmosphere, or troposphere.

However, they also absorb heat radiated up from the Earth, thereby warming the upper atmosphere, or stratosphere.

Historically, so-called volcanic winters have caused catastrophic famines.

For further information see:

http://history1800s.about.com/od/crimesanddisasters/a/The-Year-Without-A-Summer.htm

http://www.erh.noaa.gov/car/Newsletter/htm_format_articles/climate_corner/yearwithoutsummer_lf.htm