Climatic effects and impacts of the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in the Czech Lands

Abstract

Abstract. The eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia in 1815 was one of the most powerful of its kind in recorded history. This contribution addresses climatic responses to it, the post-eruption weather, and its impacts on human life in the Czech Lands. The climatic effects are evaluated in terms of air temperature and precipitation on the basis of long-term homogenised series from the Prague-Klementinum and Brno meteorological stations, and mean Czech series in the short term (1810–1820) and long term (1800–2010). This analysis is complemented by other climatic and environmental data derived from rich documentary evidence. Czech documentary sources make no direct mention of the Tambora eruption, neither do they relate any particular weather phenomena to it, but they record an extremely wet summer for 1815 and an extremely cold summer for 1816 (the "Year Without a Summer") that contributed to bad grain harvests and widespread grain price increases in 1817. Possible reasons for the cold summers in the first decade of the 19th century reflected in the contemporary press included comets, sunspot activity, long-term cooling and finally – as late as 1817 – earthquakes with volcanic eruptions.

Long-term variability of drought indices in the Czech Lands and effects of external forcings and large-scale climate variability modes

“…This was con-J. Mikšovský et al: Long-term variability of drought indices in the Czech Lands firmed by a more recent and detailed analysis of the climatological and environmental impacts of the Tambora 1815 eruption on the Czech Lands (Brázdil et al, 2016c) and by its comparison with the Lakagígar 1783 eruption (Brázdil et al, 2017). The presence of a distinct signature of the Tambora eruption was also confirmed in the central European treering chronologies, though overestimated in both intensity and duration of the cooling (Büntgen et al, 2015).…”

Mediterranean winter snowfall variability over the past millennium

“…After the abnormal winter 1708–1709, the SSI(GF) suffered a sudden decay (around the second red dot in Figure ), with snowfall shortening, although the central part of winter continued to be snowy almost every year. Increased volcanic activity (like the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia, Oppenheimer, ) and the Dalton solar minimum (1810–1930, Anet et al, ) played an important role in the anomalous cooling of all seasons in the period 1800–1840 (Büntgen et al, ; Brázdil et al, and cited literature).…”

Sunspot Observations Made by Hallaschka During the Dalton Minimum

“…Franz Ignatz Cassian Hallaschka (1780-1847) was a Czech physicist, born in the Moravia region, who performed meteorological and astronomical observations during the first years of the 19th century (Brázdil et al, 2016). In 1807, he obtained the PhD degree at the University of Vienna and he returned to the Czech Republic to work as a professor of mathematics and physics in Mikulov and Brno until 1814 (Šolc, 1999 Among these studies, we have recovered sunspot observations made by Hallaschka (Hallaschka, 1814) at Brno (around 49°11′ N, 16°36′ E), where he established a small astronomical observatory, from 9 April to 3 May 1814.…”