tambora, mount (indonesia)

Recounts the history of five blowups that continued to rattle the world long after the smoke had cleared and embers cooled. From a mountaintop in Indonesia to an oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, the explosions explored here caused widespread peril and destruction.

Examines the changes that occurred after the volcanic eruption in Indonesia in 1815, including the worldwide disruption in the weather patterns, and the effects on politics, the economy, the arts, and social structures.

When Indonesia's Mount Tambora erupted in 1815, it unleashed the most destructive wave of extreme weather the world has witnessed in thousands of years. The volcano's massive sulfate dust cloud enveloped the Earth, cooling temperatures and disrupting major weather systems for more than three years. Amid devastating storms, drought, and floods, communities worldwide endured famine, disease, and civil unrest on a catastrophic scale. On the eve of the bicentenary of the great eruption, Tambora tells the extraordinary story of the weather chaos it wrought, weaving the latest climate science with the social history of this frightening period to offer a cautionary tale about the potential tragic impacts of drastic climate change in our own century.

Traces a year of dramatic global change in the aftermath of a massive early nineteenth-century Indonesian volcanic eruption that disrupted weather patterns and triggered food shortages, religious revivals, migrations, and a typhus epidemic.

Describes and presents color photos of the Tambora volcano of Indonesia, covering its physical characteristics, history, and future, including the eruption of 1815.