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Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates gradually shifting narratives in the aftermath of extreme climate events in the 1816 “year without a summer”: from narratives of global cooling, arctic ice break-up and glacier growth, to the 20th-Century re-evaluation of Tambora’s volcanic activity as cause.

Paper long abstract:

The 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia caused wet, frigid weather across the northern hemisphere that resulted in years of crop failures, summer snows, widespread famine in Europe, and a ‘year without a summer’ in 1816. This climate event has attracted intense attention in recent years from climate scientists and scholars of environmental humanities, and icy literary visions of environmental disaster produced in these years (Frankenstein, Byron’s Darkness) continue to hold enormous influence in eco-critical studies. Despite contemporary reporting of the Tambora eruption and previous speculation about volcanic effects on climate, it took nearly a hundred years for Tambora and the 1816 climate effects to be linked. Instead, 19th-Century meteorological practitioners proposed causes from sunspots, to arctic ice break-up and global cooling. Luke Howard, prominent British meteorologist and namer-of-clouds, travelled through Europe documenting strange and unseasonable snow and ice forms, collating similar reports from around the globe, and simultaneously attempting to quell public fears and narratives of widespread cooling. This paper examines popular communication and meteorological response in two time periods: first focusing on the immediate British periodical and daily press reporting of the climate events, then jumping to the post-Krakatoa volcanology and climate studies to examine how, and why, the “Year without a summer” cold became re-evaluated in the early and mid 20th-century and accepted as a volcanic effect.