When was tambora last eruption

The eruption produced global climatic effects and killed more than , people, directly and indirectly. Minor lava domes and flows have been extruded on the caldera floor at Tambora during the 19th and 20th centuries. The large caldera of Tambora volcano seen from the air.

Show interactive Map. Last earthquakes nearby. View recent quakes. The mightly caldera of Tambora volcano - the site of the largest known historic volcanic explosion in the world: the volcano was decapitated during its violent explosion More photos.

Latest satellite images. Show more. Word of Tambora traveled no faster than a sailing ship, limiting its notoriety. In my 40 years of geological work I had never heard of Tambora until a couple of years ago when I started researching a book on enormous natural disasters.

So when the chance arose to visit the volcano while on a trip last fall to Bali and other Spice Islands, I took it. But researchers who have studied the volcano encouraged me. That was all I needed to hear. The parched terrain was like savanna, covered with tall grasses and only a few trees. A few hours west of Bima, the huge bulk of Tambora begins to dominate the horizon. We camped a third of the way up the mountain, and set out at dawn for the summit, wending around boulders the size of small cars that were tossed like pebbles from the erupting volcano nearly two centuries ago.

Our guide, Rahim, chose a trail that switched back and forth for about four miles. The day was warm and humid, the temperature in the 70s. Grasses in places were charred black, burned by hunters in pursuit of deer. I was excited to approach the site of one of the most important geological events since human beings first walked the planet. Yet as I looked up at the mountain, I realized I had another purpose in mind. The climb was a chance to reassure myself that after treatment for two kinds of cancer in the past decade, I could still master such a challenge.

For me, then, it was a test. For the two porters, striding along in flip-flops, it was a pleasant stroll in the country. In repose for thousands of years, the volcano began rumbling in early April of Soldiers hundreds of miles away on Java, thinking they heard cannon fire, went looking for a battle.

Fire-generated winds uprooted trees. Pyroclastic flows, or incandescent ash, poured down the slopes at more than miles an hour, destroying everything in their paths and boiling and hissing into the sea 25 miles away. Huge floating rafts of pumice trapped ships at harbor. Throughout the region, ash rained down for weeks.

In the north-eastern United States in the spring and summer of the sunlight was dimmed and reddened by periods of fog, which wind and rain did not disperse. It was described as a kind of aerosol veil. London experienced spectacular sunsets at the turn of June and July, which are thought to have influenced paintings by Turner.

The following year brought far more damaging effects, with serious consequences for climate and the fertility of the land over much of the world, as global temperatures dropped. In mid-June Mary and Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and two other friends were staying at the Villa Diodati in Switzerland when the weather was so repellently rainy and foggy that they were trapped indoors. Byron suggested that they pass the time by each writing a horror story and that was when Mary Shelley began to create Frankenstein.

In Canada the Quebec area had deep snow. Cold persisted through the summer months in North America and elsewhere and quantities of crops failed. The monsoon seasons in India and China were disrupted, with damaging agricultural effects, famine and cholera, and was called the year without a summer. Such conditions persisted until and are believed to have helped create severe epidemics of typhus in south-eastern Europe and the eastern Mediterranean.

Harvests failed in Britain and famine struck Ireland, Germany and other areas of Europe, sparking outbreaks of rioting and causing starvation.

Months Past. Possibly the most destructive volcanic eruption of all time occurred on 10 April Mount Tambora is still active.