Tambora · the Eruption That Changed the World

Tambora · the Eruption That Changed the World
Authors
Wood, Gillen D'Arcy
Publisher
Princeton University Press
Tags
history , science
ISBN
9780691150543
Date
2014-04-27T00:00:00+00:00
Size
2.99 MB
Lang
en
Downloaded: 13 times

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. Communities worldwide endured famine, disease, and civil unrest on a catastrophic scale.

Here, Gillen D'Arcy Wood traces Tambora's global and historical reach: how the volcano's three-year climate change regime initiated the first worldwide cholera pandemic, expanded opium markets in China, and plunged the United States into its first economic depression. Bringing the history of this planetary emergency to life, *Tambora* sheds light on the fragile interdependence of climate and human societies to offer a cautionary tale about the potential tragic impacts of drastic climate change in our own century.