Volcanoes, Climate, and Society: Bicentenary of the great Tambora

Volcanoes, Climate, and Society: Bicentenary of the great Tambora
eruption
Stefan Brönnimann1,2, Thomas Peter3
1
Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Switzerland
2
Institute of Geography, University of Bern, Switzerland
3
Institute of Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
1. Scientific Report
From 7 to 10 April 2015 the international conference “Volcanoes, Climate, and Society:
Bicentenary of the great Tambora eruption” was held in Bern. The event was organized by the
Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research and co-funded by the Swiss National Science
Foundation, SPARC, PAGES, the Swiss Academy of Sciences, and the Johanna Dürmüller-Bol
Foundation, and the Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research. The workshop
commemorated the 200-year anniversary of the 1815 Tambora eruption. The goal of the
conference was to discuss progress in our current understanding of stratosphere-troposphere
processes. Around 130 scientists participated in the meeting, including four scientists from
Indonesia (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Participants of the conference “Bicentenary of the Great Tambora Eruption” in Bern, 7-10 April 2015.
Even after 200 years, science can learn from analyzing the Tambora eruption and its climatic and
societal consequences. However, this requires a comprehensive Earth System perspective (Figure
2). Correspondingly, the participants came from a broad range of fields, encompassing
volcanology, atmospheric physics and chemistry, biogeochemistry, dynamical climatology,
paleoclimatology, history, ethnology, and the arts. Only with such combined expertise can the
event and all its consequences be understood. Consequently, the speakers came from a broad
range of different fields encompassing volcanology, atmospheric physics and chemistry,
dynamical climatology, paleoclimatology, history, ethnology, and arts.
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Figure 2: An Earth system perspective of the 1815 Tambora eruption and its consequences.
In his keynote talk, Clive Oppenheimer gave an overview of the subject. In April 1815, the
Indonesian volcano Tambora awakened. The main eruption phase starting on 10 April was one of
the strongest in recent history. It devastated the island of Sumbawa and killed thousands of people.
In the following year, the eruption led to global cooling and to climatic changes in the tropics,
Europe, and North America. Disease and famine claimed tens of thousands of deaths. Among the
most affected regions was Switzerland, where the cold and rainy summer of 1816 contributed to
the last famine.
The individual sessions then touched on all aspects mentioned above: From the geology and
archaeology of the region to the sulphur ejection into the atmosphere, from questions related to
aerosol microphysics to their interaction with radiation, from global climate effects to the regional
imprint via changes in climate dynamics, from ocean-atmosphere-sea ice interaction to the imprint
of the volcanic eruption in environmental archives, from historical aspects to famine and social
unrest. The final talk presented a way of how the amount of volcanic aerosols can be estimated
from sunset paintings from that time period, thus making the link back from culture to the physics
of the atmosphere.
Together, the talks summarized our knowledge of the eruption and its aftermath on the context of
present-day scientific questions. They also pointed to knowledge gaps. For instance, the effect of
small eruptions, of high-latitude eruptions, of tropospheric eruptions, or of tropospheric ash might
have been underestimated in the past.
As the last day of the conference coincided with the start of the main eruption phase 200 years
earlier, the conference received considerable media attention. Below we list 19 media reports,
which included Swiss TV and Radio.
The meeting will likely lead to two peer-reviewed review papers in the journal WIREs Climate
Change. The first part (Raible et al. 2015) has been submitted 31 July 2015, the second part is in
preparation.
A brief meeting report appeared in the SCNAT Newsletter in June 2015
(www.naturwissenschaften.ch/service/publications/42647-newsletter-scnat-juni-2015-), a meeting
report also appeared in the SPARC Newsletter (Brönnimann et al. 2015a) and another report will
appear soon in the PAGES Magazine (Brönnimann et al. 2015b).
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2. Output
Media coverage
"Als die Appenzeller Gras assen" (Blick am Abend, 14 April 2015)
"Als die Appenzeller Gras assen" (St. Galler Tagblatt, 11 April 2015)
"Als die Appenzeller Gras assen" (Argauer Zeitung, 10 April 2015)
"Das Jahr ohne Sommer" (SRF 2 Kultur, 11. April 2015)
"Die Leute tauchten Setzlinge in Gülle" (Neue Luzerner Zeitung, 10 April 2015)
"Ein Vulkanausbruch, der die Welt veränderte" (SRF Tagesschau, 10 April 2015)
"Tausende Hungertote in der Schweiz" (Tages Anzeiger, 10 April 2015)
"Letusan Seperti Tambora Pasti Terjadi Lagi" (in Indonesian, TEMPO, 10 April 2015)
"Inferno am Tambora brachte Europa ein 'Jahr ohne Sommer'" (Der Tagesspiegel, 9 April 2015)
"Wie das 'Jahr ohne Sommer' Europa veränderte" (Deutschlandfunk, 9 April 2015)
"Tambora, autopsie d’une éruption monstre" (in French, Le Temps, 9 avril 2015)
"Als die Schweizer Gras assen" (Newsnet/TA, 9 April 2015)
"Tambora: Der grösste Vulkanausbruch seit Menschengedenken" (SRF Einstein, 9 April 2015)
"Tambora-Ausbruch führte zu Hungersnot in der Schweiz" (SRF Einstein, 9 April 2015)
"Hungersnot im 'Jahr ohne Sommer' traf die Ostschweiz am schlimmsten" (watson.ch, 9 April
2015)
"Als die Appenzeller Gras assen" (BauernZeitung, 8 April 2015)
"Vulkanausbruch Tambora: Die wichtigsten Fragen und Antworten" (SRF Panorama, 8 April
2015)
"Sie assen Gras und Tierkadaver" (Der Bund, 7 April 2015)
"Der Vulkan, der den Winter brachte" (Radio Bayern 2, 7 April 2015)
Publications
Brönnimann, S., M. Grosjean, F. Joos, W. Tinner, C. Rohr, C. Raible, F. Arfeuille (2015a)
Bicentenary of the Great Tambora Eruption: Implications for stratosphere-troposphere processes.
SPARC Newsletter 45, 26-30.
Brönnimann, S., M. Grosjean, F. Joos, W. Tinner, C. Rohr (2015b) Lessons from Tambora.
PAGES Magazine 23, (in press).
Raible, C.C., S. Brönnimann, R. Auchmann, P. Brohan, T. L. Frölicher, H.-F. Graf, P. Jones, J.
Luterbacher, S. Muthers, R. Neukom, A. Robock, S. Self, A. Sudrajat, C. Timmreck, M.
Wegmann (2015) Tambora 1815 as a test case for high impact volcanic eruptions: Earth system
effects. WIREs Climate Change (submitted).
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