A volcano cancelled a summer
The April 1815 eruption of Tambora cooled the planet enough that 1816 was, in many places, the year without a summer.
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Tambora threw on the order of 100 cubic kilometres of material into the air and injected tens of megatonnes of sulfur into the stratosphere. Sulfate aerosols reflect sunlight. Tree rings, ice cores, and weather logs all show a cold excursion in the following year.
Snow fell in June in parts of New England. Harvests failed in Europe. The gloom of 1816 is part of the background of Mary Shelley's summer in Geneva. The climate fact does not depend on the novel. The novel happened to be written in the weather.
Caveats
- Not every local famine in 1816 was Tambora alone. The eruption was a large push on a system that already varied.
- The forcing lasted a few years, not a generation. The aerosols fall out.
Sources
- 1Stothers R. B.. The Great Tambora Eruption in 1815 and Its Aftermath. Science 224, 1984.