Today is the 198th anniversary of the largest volcanic event in recorded history, the deadly and devastating eruption of Mount Tambora on the island of Sumbawa in Indonesia. The eruption was four times as powerful as that of its later and more famous sibling, Mount Krakatoa, in 1883, and was equivalent to an 800 megaton explosion. For comparison, the Fat Man and Little Boy nuclear weapons dropped on Japan during World War II were roughly 12.5 kilotons each, and the largest nuclear weapon ever built — the Soviet Union’s Tsar Bomba — was tested at a relatively paltry 50 megatons.
The island of Sumbawa, with Mount Tambora clearly seen. Via Wikipedia.
The eruption of Tambora is a troubling reminder of the powerful forces that lie sleeping within the Earth. When the mountain blew, it ejected an estimated 160 cubic kilometers of material, with an eruption column some 43 kilometers high. Before the eruption, the mountain was 14,100 feet tall, and one of the tallest in Indonesia; afterwards, only 9,354 ft of its height remained. Ash was distributed throughout the upper atmosphere worldwide, resulting in significant climate effects, as we will note below.
The death toll from the eruption was horrific: some 12,000 people were killed as a direct result of the eruption, with even more dying in the aftermath from famine and disease. The most modern estimate suggests 71,000 people died in total.
In that era, worldwide communication was still slow and unreliable. There are not many detailed reports of the eruption itself, and its aftermath. On this grim anniversary, I thought I would share some of the original first-hand accounts of the event and the devastation.
Skulls in the Stars 