Excerpt of "Tambora" by Gillen D'Arcy Wood
Excerpt of "Tambora" by Gillen D'Arcy Wood
Excerpt of "Tambora" by Gillen D'Arcy Wood
Introduction
Frankensteins Weather
60N
30N
0 Equator
30S
60S
90S
180
120W
50
60W
100
150
200
250
60E
300
350
400
120E
450
180
500
Figure 0.1. This 2007 model of Tamboras sulfate cloud shows its global reach, with
ment for the future of art. Meanwhile, from his studio on Greifswald
Harbor in Germany, Caspar David Friedrich painted a sky with a chromic density thatone scientific study has foundcorresponds to the
optical aerosol depth of the colossal volcanic eruption that year.3
Forster, Turner, and Friedrichall committed skywatcherssaw the
imprint of major atmospheric changes in the North Atlantic. But neither Forsters London sky on fire in September 1815 nor the nearly
three years of destructive global cooling that ensued inspired anyone
to the realization that a faraway volcanic eruption had caused it all.
Not until the Cold Warand the development of meteorological instruments to measure nuclear falloutdid scientists begin study of the
atmospheric residency of volcanic aerosols. The sun-blocking dust veil
Figure 0.2. Caspar David Friedrich, Ships in the Harbor (1816). Sanssouci Palace, Potsdam.
of a major eruption, it was concluded, might linger above the earth for
up to three years. Two centuries after Franklins first tentative speculations, the geophysical chain linking volcanism and climate could at last
be proven.
I dwell on this point for good reason. The formidable, occasionally
mind-bending challenge in writing this book has been to trace cataclysmic world events the cause of which the historical actors themselves
were ignorant. Generations of historians since have done little better.
The Tamboran climate emergency followed hard upon the devastations
of the Napoleonic Wars and has always remained in the shadows of that
epochal conflict. Out of sight and out of mind, Tambora was the volcanic stealth bomber of the early nineteenth-century. Be it the retching
cholera victim in Calcutta, the starving peasant children of Yunnan or
County Tyrone, the hopeful explorer of a Northwest Passage through
the Arctic Ocean, or the bankrupt land speculator in Baltimore, the
worlds residents were oblivious to the volcanic drivings of their fate.
Equally challenging for me as an environmental historian has been
to capture the physically remote relation between cause and effect in
measuring Tamboras impact on the global commons of the nineteenth
century. Volcanic strife traveled great distances and via obscure agents.
But it is only by tracing such teleconnectionsa guiding principle of
todays climate and ecological sciencesthat the worldwide tragedy of
Tambora can be rescued from its two-century oblivion.
Climate change is hard to see and no less difficult to imagine. After a
days climb through the dense forests of Sumbawa Island, drenched in
tropical rains, I almost didnt succeed in seeing at firsthand the great
Tamboras evacuated peak. Then, at daybreak on the second morning,
the clouds suddenly lifted, and we were able to complete our ascent
along the treeless ridges. Nearing the summit, we clambered over flat
pool tables of tan, serrated rock and left our boot prints in the black
volcanic sand. Almost without warning, we found ourselves at the rim
of a great inverted dome of earth, with sheer rock walls leading down
to a pearl-green lake a kilometer below. My camera whirred as puffclouds of sulfur performed lazy inversions in the still, separate universe
Figure 0.3. Tamboras caldera. The morning this photograph was taken (March 3, 2011),
the mountain rumbled and the odor of sulfur was palpable. A few weeks later, the
volcano began belching ash and smoke. By September that year, Indonesian seismologists had ordered evacuation of the surrounding area. Volcanologists do not expect an
imminent eruption, however, on account of the geologically recent 1815 event. (Author
photo).
Figure 0.4. An aerial view of Tamboras caldera taken from the International Space Sta-
tropical eruptions, climate change, and human affairs. Climbing Tambora, by this route, one could not mistake its greatness.
Tambora belongs to a dense volcanic cluster along the Sunda arc of
the Indonesian archipelago. This east-west ridge of volcanoes is a segment, in turn, of the much larger Ring of Fire, a hemisphere-girdling
string of volcanic mountains bordering the Pacific Ocean from the
southern tip of Chile, to Mount St. Helens in Washington State, to picturesque Mount Fuji in Japan, to Tamboras near neighbor Krakatau,
due to explode into global fame in 1883. Along its almost 40,000 kilometers length, the Ring of Fire boasts lofty, cone-topped volcanoes located
exclusively on coastlines and islands. Tambora sits some 330 kilometers
north of a tectonic ridge in the trans-Pacific Ring of Fire known as the
Java Trench, which marks a curvilinear course south of the islands of
Sumbawa and its neighbors Lombok and Sumba.
After perhaps a thousand years dormancy, Tamboras devastating
evacuation and collapse in April 1815 required only a few days. It was
the concentrated energy of this event that was to have the greatest human impact. By shooting its contents into the stratosphere with such
biblical force, Tambora ensured its volcanic gases reached sufficient
height to seriously disable the seasonal rhythms of the global climate
system, throwing human communities worldwide into chaos. The sun-
dimming stratospheric aerosols produced by Tamboras eruption in
1815 spawned the most devastating, sustained period of extreme weather
seen on our planet in perhaps thousands of years.
A dramatic story unto itself. But a more urgent motivation has
driven my history of Tambora. The great Sumbawan volcano is the
most recent volcanic eruption to have had a dramatic impact on global
climate. Considered on a geological timescale, Tambora stands almost
insistently near to us, begging to be studied. On the eve of Tamboras
bicentenary and facing multiplying extreme weather crises of our own,
its eruption looms as the richest case study we have for understanding
how abrupt shifts in climate affect human societies on global scales and
decadal time frames. The Tambora climate emergency of 181518 offers
us a rare, clear window onto a world convulsed by weather extremes,
with human communities everywhere struggling to adapt to sudden,