AccuWeather Founder & Executive Chairman and author of "Invisible Iceberg: When Climate & Weather Shaped History" Dr. Joel Myers and Bernie Rayno discuss how a volcano eruption in 1815 caused a year without a summer and even led to the creation of some of the world's most famous monsters.
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00:00Welcome to Invisible Iceberg, I'm Bernie Reyno.
00:07On today's show, we'll explore how the most powerful volcanic eruption ever recorded
00:12actually led to a year without a summer.
00:15Plus, we'll show you how this 19th century volcanic disaster brought us everything from
00:21vampire stories to the state of Texas, and we'll reveal some of the factors behind
00:27the historic warming and cooling of our planet.
00:31It all starts now on Invisible Iceberg.
00:40For more than 200 years, it has remained the most powerful volcanic eruption in recorded
00:46history.
00:47As the firing, flaming lava and ash spewed from Indonesia's Mount Tambora in 1815,
00:53no one could have guessed the worldwide effects about to unfold.
00:58The aftermath spanned continents, with the resulting weather changes limiting food supplies,
01:04triggering mass migrations, and creating the year without a summer.
01:09It's just one of the fascinating stories in the book, Invisible Iceberg, When Climate
01:13and Weather Shaped History.
01:14Joining me now to put it all together for us is Akiwa, the founder and executive chairman
01:19and author of the book, Invisible Iceberg, When Climate and Weather Shaped History, Dr.
01:24Joel Myers.
01:27The year without a summer, you hear that term a lot, but it actually happened when Tambora,
01:35the volcano, went off in 1815.
01:38Yeah, April 1815.
01:40And 1816 was the year without a summer.
01:43Actually, the volcano threw so much ash and debris into the atmosphere, into the stratosphere,
01:49it circled the globe, particularly the northern hemisphere, reflecting sunlight back into
01:55space, causing cooling.
01:58And it took three years or more for all the dust and debris to come out of the atmosphere.
02:04So the cooling lasted three or four years.
02:06At its extreme, for example, in Germany, where they had good measurements, the temperature
02:11that summer in 1816 averaged nine degrees below normal.
02:16Now, summer variations, one year to the next, are usually much smaller than winter variations.
02:20Nine degrees, but that's a dramatic difference, enough to cause crops to fail.
02:26And also a lack of sunlight caused less photosynthesis, and so crops failed, really, across the northern
02:34hemisphere.
02:35So there was some famine, caused the western migration in the United States.
02:44But the impact on the weather were dramatic, and the reason it's called the year without
02:48a summer is because there was no summer.
02:50It was so cold.
02:51There were frosts in New York State and New England in all the summer months.
02:57There were snow flurries reported down to Long Island Sound in the summertime.
03:02Which is hard to do even in the wintertime sometimes in Long Island Sound.
03:06I don't think the normal individual understands how detrimental volcanic eruptions, they can
03:14be to the Earth's climate.
03:16And once it happens, it's no different than if a meteor, in a way, would hit the United
03:22States, hit the surface, because it's similar because of all of the dust particles.
03:26But once it erupts, it's weeks, right, before you start getting the impacts.
03:32It's almost instantaneously.
03:33Well, it could be.
03:35The effect probably shows up in some places in days by blocking the sun, and then as it
03:41spreads around, certainly it has a global effect.
03:44If it's a powerful volcanic eruption that spreads and reaches into the stratosphere,
03:49because the stratosphere is much more stable, so when you get dust up there, it stays for
03:55a long time.
03:56So it circles the globe and reduces the sunlight.
03:59Now, volcanoes produce two types of things, dust and debris, and also sulfur and gases,
04:07which can add to a greenhouse effect.
04:09So the greenhouse effect can cause warming, and some volcanic eruptions cause more warming
04:14than cooling, but many of them cause more cooling because of the debris.
04:20And if they put out both, often if you get a big eruption, the dust particles overwhelm
04:26the sulfur effect, the gases effect, and so you wind up with cooling, and in this case,
04:31it was terrific.
04:32But there have probably been other volcanic eruptions in our history that were more powerful
04:38than this, that did cause massive cooling, and of course, it might have been before people
04:44were growing crops, but that's always a threat.
04:47And Yellowstone, actually, is going to go up at some point.
04:53I don't know how accurate, these are weather forecasts that are not nearly as accurate,
04:56but I saw one prediction that every year there's a less than one in a million chance, but it's
05:02not infinitesimal, a one in 700,000 chance that Yellowstone will blow, and if Yellowstone
05:08blows, it'll be much more powerful than this one, potentially, and it would change humanity
05:15in many ways, because whether crops survive, just like what happened with the meteorite
05:24and the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, there was years without, you couldn't see the sun.
05:32Great insight, Dr. Myers.
05:33We'll be checking back with you in just a few minutes.
05:37Here with more perspective on this event is Gillen Darcy Wood.
05:41He is a professor and the associate director for the Institute for Sustainability, Energy
05:46and Environment at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
05:51Thanks for joining us today, sir.
05:55It's a pleasure, Bernie.
05:57How did the eruption of this one volcano impact the world's weather?
06:03How did it create a year without a summer?
06:06It's very interesting, Bernie, that only certain kinds of volcanoes, with plinian eruptions
06:13erupting high into the stratosphere and located near the equator, are capable of altering
06:20the world's climate.
06:21We hear a lot about the Iceland volcanoes these days and their impacts on Europe, but
06:27an Iceland volcano, because it is so far north, has no ability to influence global climate.
06:32The Aurora was a very different case, and by ejecting huge amounts of volcanic matter
06:38into the stratosphere, we're talking if you took the topsoil of Illinois and Texas combined
06:43and threw it up into the stratosphere, that you get some sort of understanding of the
06:50aerosol veil that blanketed the planet.
06:54It caused all kinds of problems from drought to pandemics.
06:58It also stressed the world's food supply.
07:02Absolutely.
07:04So if you think about how temperature affects weather, the depression of the temperature
07:09gradient, altered wind patterns or altered storm tracks, to take one example, the Icelandic
07:16low-pressure system which sits south of Iceland, customary, was shifted several degrees of
07:24latitude to the south, sucking up enormous volumes of Atlantic water and depositing them
07:30in the form of rainstorms over Western Europe.
07:34So Western Europe was flooded in the summers of 1816 and 1817, causing disastrous deficits
07:42of crop yields and starvation across Western Europe.
07:46And of course it had world impacts, but let's talk about a little closer to the United States,
07:51how it contributed to some migrations.
07:54Exactly.
07:56So particularly if we think about New England as a kind of concentration of marginal farming
08:03communities in the colonial and early 19th century context in the United States, with
08:14the extremely cold temperatures over 1816, 1817, and into 1818, we had not the failure
08:22of simply one harvest, but multiple harvests year after year after year.
08:28And this forced entire villages, entire farming communities in Vermont and New Hampshire and
08:34Massachusetts who had been working very close to the margins of viability, it forced them
08:40to migrate westward.
08:42So we have the first westward migration in the United States beginning in 1816, thousands
08:47and thousands of people taking to the roads and the byways and heading to what we now
08:55know as the Midwest, heading to Pennsylvania and beyond, to Ohio and to what is now Indiana
09:01and Illinois.
09:02Could we get a volcano again, create a multi-year weather disturbance?
09:08We certainly could, given that since Tambora, the globe, by historical standards, has been
09:16remarkably quiescent volcanically.
09:19We've had very few major tropical eruptions in the 200 years since Tambora.
09:24And if you look at the historical record over the last millennium, we're certainly due for
09:29another major eruption on the scale of Tambora or near it.
09:34Is there any volcano that you're keeping an eye on?
09:39Well, I think there are multiple anywhere around the Pacific Rim of Fire, which takes
09:47us from Mount St. Helens all the way around to the area of Tambora and Krakatoa.
09:54Tambora itself has been showing signs of coming to life.
09:58I was there in 2012 and we had to evacuate the mountain because of rumblings.
10:04And then, of course, there's the nearby Krakatoa volcano, which erupted in 1983 and is perhaps
10:10more globally, was smaller, but more globally famous due to the invention of the telegraph
10:15and modern communications.
10:16So I think we have many candidates along the Pacific Rim of Fire that could throw the world
10:22into chaos overnight.
10:23Gillen Darcy Wood, associate director for the Institute for Sustainability, Energy and
10:28Environment at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
10:32Thank you again for joining us.
10:35Thank you, Benny.
10:36Still to come, our planet has experienced warming and cooling trends since the 19th
10:41century.
10:42We'll explain the factors that could be causing these fluctuations in temperature.
10:47But next, find out how this volcanic eruption led to the creation of a religion and even
10:53some of our favorite pop culture monsters.
11:03Welcome back to Invisible Iceberg.
11:05I'm Bernie Raynaud.
11:06We're continuing our discussion on the year without a summer.
11:10We're going to focus now on its lasting impact on our economy, culture and even religion.
11:18Back with me again is Ackua, the founder and executive chairman and author of Invisible
11:22Iceberg, When Climate and Weather Shaped History, Dr. Joel Myers.
11:27Interesting title of this chapter.
11:29It's not called The Year Without a Summer.
11:33It's actually A Summerish Year Brings Frankenstein and Vampires and More.
11:39Sounds a little scary.
11:41How does vampires and Frankenstein get into this chapter?
11:45Well, those books were all written during this period, but let's go back and try and
11:51place ourselves in the year without a summer, 1816, 1817.
11:56We didn't have radio or television, modern communications, never the Internet.
12:02There were newspapers, so there was not anywhere near the scientific knowledge we have today.
12:08So this volcano goes off, crops are failing.
12:12The sky is totally different than it's ever been.
12:16There's more rain, the climate and the weather is all impacted.
12:20In fact, in parts of Europe, lots of rain, flooding, thunderstorms, more dramatic than
12:26they had ever seen before.
12:28The sky looks eerie and all.
12:31People were scared.
12:32It was a lot of change and having an economic impact against that background and health,
12:38the crops failing.
12:40And so it turned out these people who were talking about all this impact happened to
12:47be writers together in Switzerland, trapped in the house by the flooding and the rain
12:52and all that.
12:54And as they talked about these different things, they each came up with stories, one about
12:58Frankenstein, Dracula, all kinds of scary stories because it was a scary time.
13:06But it also led to a new religion.
13:11Yeah, the Mormon religion was founded by Smith, who lived in New England, and because of the
13:20crop failures and the economic impact, he and his family started migrating westward.
13:25He was he'd been through a lot of hardship and was trying to sort it out and spent a
13:31lot of time in the woods praying and came up with the basis for the Book of Mormon and
13:36created this religion that now has 17 million followers.
13:40It originated during that time and was driven by the chaos and the hardship from the volcanic
13:48eruption.
13:49How did this event led to the statehood of Texas?
13:53Yeah, over a period of time it did.
13:56Well, again, the migration.
13:59And interestingly, Mexico, which owned Texas, Texas was part of Mexico, wanted Americans
14:07to migrate there.
14:08They had a shortage of workers and so on.
14:10It's sort of a reverse what is today.
14:12And so they encouraged Americans to come.
14:15So but then too many Americans came.
14:17And then they didn't want that many.
14:19So they different things happened.
14:23And finally, there was a conflict at the Alamo, as you know, and ultimately Texas became a
14:29state.
14:30But it was all triggered by what happened.
14:33But it really resulted, I think, from the migration.
14:36It was set up from the volcanic eruption and the year without a summer.
14:41And how long did it take until everything just finally returned to normal after the
14:45eruption?
14:46Well, it probably was an impact, a dramatic impact on crop failure and the, of course,
14:53the pandemic.
14:55You could say it was five to 10 years before things sorted themselves out and returned
15:00to what had been a more or less normal.
15:03But of course, it set in motion things like led to the state of Texas.
15:08Let's talk about when you were researching this book about how it impacted the continent
15:13of Asia.
15:15Well, you know, there were there were droughts, there were crop failures in all parts of the
15:21world, Germany and China.
15:24And then, of course, it triggered pandemics.
15:28We don't have exact records we do now, but there was some severe pandemics that called
15:32millions of people in individual countries around the world might have killed the pandemic.
15:38Tens of millions of people, again, attributable to the cold and the and the, you know,
15:44the effect.
15:45And obviously, then you had poor nutrition.
15:47People were weakened and so they weren't eating enough.
15:51The lives were greatly disrupted, maybe inhaling smoke.
15:56And at the time of the even the explosion itself, you had boulders like this falling
16:01miles away, raining down on people and the deaths within five, 10 miles of the explosion.
16:10People died, horrible deaths of all types, not being able to breathe, being burned alive.
16:16It was horrendous.
16:17So there were so many impacts of this volcanic explosion.
16:22We can go on for hours talking about it.
16:24If this happened today, what impacts might it have?
16:28Could technology that we have limit the hardship or would it be so devastating that things
16:37would be similar?
16:39First of all, people have to eat.
16:41They need food.
16:42If they don't have food and water, they become desperate.
16:45So no matter how good the economy, how good the technology is, if there's not enough grain
16:51and food and storage, we saw that with the Mayans.
16:55They had uncertainty in their climate over shorter periods of time, but they stored a
17:00lot and prepared for it.
17:01But finally, it became too long periods between abundance and shortage.
17:07So that's what it would depend on, how long it lasted, how much food there wasn't stored.
17:12There would be nations that were not prepared.
17:14And unfortunately, those poor countries that had less would, I don't know if technology
17:20could save them.
17:21Certainly we're in a better position today than we were then, but we just had a pandemic
17:24and still did.
17:25Millions of people died around the world.
17:28Did we do better than we did in the 1917 pandemic?
17:31Probably.
17:32But did we do a tremendous amount better?
17:35Do we know what to do?
17:36Questionable.
17:37I want to thank Acua, the founder and executive chairman and author of the book Invisible
17:41Iceberg, when climate and weather shaped history.
17:44Dr. Joe Myers, for joining us today.
17:45Thanks, Dr. Joe.
17:46My pleasure.
17:47Again, Bernie.
17:49Invisible Iceberg continues after this.
18:03Welcome back to Invisible Iceberg.
18:06I'm Bernie Raynaud.
18:07The Earth's climate has changed markedly since 1816, when the summer went absent.
18:13Since the 19th century, records clearly show the United States is experiencing warming.
18:18While much of the warming has occurred during the winter and spring months, the summer too
18:21has warmed by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit.
18:25During this time, however, there have been periods of warming and some cooling.
18:29We saw a significant increase in summer temperatures during the 1930s, followed by a nearly flat
18:35temperature trend through the 1970s.
18:38This was partly due to air pollution, as increasing particulates reflected more of the sun's
18:43energy.
18:44Following the passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970 and in 1977, temperatures slowly increased,
18:51followed by a larger trend after 2000, as the warming due to climate change accelerated.
18:57The warming, however, has not been uniform.
18:59The greatest increase in warming has been over the western states and parts of the northeast,
19:05while portions of the southeast have not seen any warming and even some cooling during the
19:10summer.
19:11This cooling may reflect increasing precipitation due to warmer ocean waters.
19:16Nonetheless, as the Earth continues to warm, it is likely that vast portions of the United
19:21States will probably experience longer and hotter summers as the impacts from climate
19:27change increase.
19:28I want to thank AccuWeather founder and executive chairman and author of the book Invisible
19:34Iceberg, When Climate and Weather Shaped History, Dr. Joel Myers for joining us today.
19:40And a big thanks to all of you for watching.
19:43If you have any questions or comments, send us an email at questions at accuweather.com.
19:49We look forward to seeing you next time.
19:51Thanks for watching.