Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Since I was a kid I’ve been reading stories about “The Year Without A Summer”. This was the summer of 1816, one year after the great eruption of the Tambora volcano in Indonesia. The Tambora eruption, in April of 1815, was so huge it could be heard from 2,600 km away (1,600 miles). The stories were always about how the following summer was outrageously cold. Supposedly, the summer was so cold it was like having no summer at all.
Being a suspicious fellow, I got to thinking about that, and I realized I’d never seen any actual temperature data for the year of 1816. So I went off to find some early temperature data. I started with the ECA dataset, and downloaded the Daily Mean Temperature TG (162Mb). That revealed five stations with daily temperature records with starting dates before 1816—Stockholm, Bologna, Milan, Praha-Klementinum, and Hohenpeissenberg.
So once again, I found myself playing “Spot the Volcanoes”, as in my previous post on this subject. When I wrote that post, I hadn’t been able to spot the smaller eruptions of Pinatubo and other modern volcanoes, but Tambora was the big cheese, the grand gorgonzola of volcanoes. Surely I could find that one … so here’s the record from Stockholm.
Figure 1. Two ten-year periods from the early 1800’s in Stockholm
So the question is, which year is “The Year Without A Summer”? The year indicated by the blue arrow, or the year shown by the green arrow?
Actually, I fear that was a trick question. Here’s the same data, this time with the years indicated.
Figure 2. Two ten-year periods from the early 1800’s in Stockholm, including the dates.
As you can see, the 1816 “Year Without A Summer” actually was warmer than a number of other summers in Stockholm. It’s the third peak from the left in the top panel, and was above 20°C. Just in this tiny sample we see some six summers that were cooler than the summer of 1816 in Stockholm …
So, I looked at the other locations. Here are the other four European cities with records that cover the Tambora eruption—Bologna, Milan, Praha-Klementinum, and Hohenpeissenberg. In these, both the upper and lower panels are from the early 1800s. No more trick questions, in all cases, one or the other of the green and blue arrows actually indicates the “Year Without A Summer”.
Figure 3. Two ten-year periods from the early 1800’s in Bologna.
Figure 4. Two ten-year periods from the early 1800’s in Milan.
Figure 5. Two ten-year periods from the early 1800’s in Praha-Klementinum.
Figure 6. Two ten-year periods from the early 1800’s in Hohenpeissenberg.
That was all the daily temperature records I could find from that far back. There’s a monthly record from Armagh, in Ireland. Here’s that record.
Figure 6. Two ten-year periods from the early 1800’s in Armagh.
I’m sure that you can see the difficulty. If Tambora actually did something to the temperature, you sure couldn’t tell it from these records. Not one of them is readily distinguishable as missing a summer.
In “The Great Tambora Eruption in 1815 and Its Aftermath” (paywalled, Science Magazine, 1984), the author says (emphasis mine):
To Europeans and North Americans, 1816 became known as “the year without a summer” (41). Daily temperatures (especially the daily minimums) were in many cases abnormally low from late spring through early fall; frequent north-west winds brought snow and frost to northern New England and Canada, and heavy rains fell in western Europe. Many crops failed to ripen, and the poor harvests led to famine, disease, and so- cial distress, compounded by the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars.Tambora’s dust veil is often blamed by modern researchers for the cold summer of 1816. The argument given is that the stratospheric dust veil would have absorbed or reflected solar radiation that could otherwise have reached the ground (42). Not all regions,however, experienced abnormally low temperatures, and the preceding winter had generally been mild. Therefore, a few researchers deny that there was any (or at least a strong) connection with the volcano (39,43).
I’m leaning towards the “few researchers” that deny a strong connection with Tambora. What other records do we have? Well, over at KNMI I find the record for Manchester, England:
Figure 6. Two ten-year periods from the early 1800’s in Manchester.
Moving across the Atlantic, here’s the record from New Haven in Connecticut.
Figure 6. Two ten-year periods from the early 1800’s in New Haven, Connecticut.
I’m just not feeling the Tambora love here … where are the records of years without a summer? Or at least of a summer that’s significantly colder than its neighbors?
Don’t get me wrong here. I suspect that generally, the summer of 1816 was a bit colder than most summers. But as the graphs above show, in all of these datasets there are comparable summers within a few decades either side of 1816 that have summers that are as cool, or cooler, than the summer of 1816.
And I would guess that a careful search would reveal some records with cooler summers than the ones I’ve found here. But overall, let me suggest that over the years the Tambora story has gotten greatly exaggerated, just as we do today with our stories of “Cold? You haven’t seen real cold. Why, when I was a young man it was so cold that …”
Conclusions? Well, my main conclusion is what I’ve been saying for some time. The temperature of the earth is not particularly ruled by the changes in how much energy it receives. Tambora cut off a huge amount of sunlight, but the effect was small. Yes, some areas had a summer that was a bit cooler than most summers. And I’m sure there were certain locations where it hit harder than others. But overall? The thermostatic mechanisms of the planet kept Tambora from having a much of a cooling effect.
My best to all. I append all of the figures below, with the dates, so you can see the lack of effect. Note that in many of them, the temperature in 1815 was about the same as 1816 … and that despite the size of the volcano, if there was any effect, it was totally gone by 1817.
w.
If that’s what a really big volcano can do, I’m not impressed. Well, I am impressed, but what’s impressive is the strength of the thermostatic mechanisms that keep the earth’s temperature within a very narrow band. Even a huge volcano can’t put it out of sorts for much more than one summer, and even then not too much.
The place to look for the effect of volcanic eruptions on the climate is in food commodity prices. That is where climate change has its greatest impact on human society. In those records the Tambora eruption is unmissable.
Sandy says:
April 15, 2012 at 7:46 am
Mike Mann has a new paper out, explaining why it is that tree rings don’t respond to volcanoes … go figure.
w.
George says:
April 15, 2012 at 10:25 am
A failed crop killed by frost can still be used for straw.
_______________________________________
Yes and the change in price of wheat/rye/oats (straw) vs the change in price of straw can indicate if the price increase in one and the decrease in the other is due to how much was planted or how much was harvested.
Timing is everything in farming.
izen says: April 15, 2012 at 7:59 am
The place to look for the effect of volcanic eruptions on the climate is in food commodity prices.
John West says: April 15, 2012 at 9:15 am
Please provide a reference. England doesn’t seem to have noticed in their food prices
This is what Excel makes from data in the John West’s table
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/ECP1810-20.htm
So more Bologna than Tambora?
Ric Werme says:
April 15, 2012 at 8:04 am
Actually, that fact was from the Science Magazine study entitled “The Great Tambora Eruption in 1815 and Its Aftermath” that I referred to in the head post (emphasis mine) …
So if you’re putting yourself forwards as an expert on the subject of Tambora, you’ve made a very bad start.
w.
Ric Werme says:
April 15, 2012 at 8:04 am
Ric, I made a special effort to dig up DAILY temperature records because I knew folks would want to make this claim … you’ll have to point out in the daily records just where these temperature stations show that the summer was “very cold some of the time”. I don’t see it.
w.
Ric Werme says:
April 15, 2012 at 8:04 am
Cite? I mean I know where the quote came from, your web page … but on that page there is no indication of where you got that information. Not saying it’s wrong, but it sounds like it’s cobbled together from various descriptions of various locations …
w.
This is in complete contradiction to the written record of total crop failures in much of New England due to frost and snow in the months of June and July 1816. On average, it likely didn’t show very much cooling on a year-to-year basis. There were periods of normal summer warmth, interrupted by snow and freezing temps.
JohnG says:
April 15, 2012 at 8:38 am
Indeed …
w.
Nylo says:
April 15, 2012 at 8:42 am
Nylo, the graphs above show that there were a number of places that didn’t suffer the terrible summer, the “year without a summer”. So if you want to claim that “this cold summer happened in all places”, you’ll first have to explain why it didn’t happen in Stockholm, Milan, Bologna, Manchester, New Haven, and the other places for which I’ve shown records.
Then you’ll have to show some records of where it actually did happen. I suspect there are some out there, I just haven’t found them.
I await your return with the relevant information and citations.
w.
John West says:
There was and it was called war.
The War of 1812 was between the British and the Americans.
The Peninsular War was between the British (allied with Spain and Portugal) and France.
Fighting on multiple fronts probably impacted the price of food in the UK.
Let me throw in another measure of how severe the growing conditions were in
Europe in the summer of 1816. Hereʼs the relevant data on the average date of
harvest of Pinot Noir grapes in Burgundy in the first quarter of the 19th century.
1800 Sept 25
1801 Oct 1
1802 Sept 20
1803 Sept 23
1804 Oct 1
1805 Oct 17
1806 Sept 25
1807 Sept 24
1808 Sept 29
1809 Oct 14
1810 Oct 2
1811 Sept 12
1812 Oct 6
1813 Oct 8
1814 Oct 5
1815 Sept 26
1816 Oct 25
1817 Oct 16
1818 Sept 21
1819 Sept 26
1820 Oct 8
1821 Oct 15
1822 Sept 1
1823 Oct 12
1824 Oct 12
1825 Sept 22
The average harvest date from 1800-1825 (exc. 1816) was Oct. 1; in 1816
the grapes werenʼt harvested until Oct 25th. The only later harvest (from
AD1370 on) was in 1436 (Oct. 26th).
So, even though temperatures may not have been significantly lower in the
growing season of 1816 in northern Europe, the wet conditions clearly
impacted harvests.
Source: Chuine, I., et al. 2004. Grape ripening as a past climate indicator. Nature,
Vol. 432, 289-290.
PS: I’ve graphed the harvest data on Excel, but can’t figure out how to transfer the data to WUWT. Advice appreciated.
“Cold? You haven’t seen real cold. Why, when I was a young man it was so cold that …” Reminds me of this:
A very neat and clear analysis of the reality behind the year without a summer supposedly due to Tambora. I like your conclusion that :
“The thermostatic mechanisms of the planet kept Tambora from having a much of a cooling effect.”
This paper is the Central England temperatures: monthly means 1659 to 1973 by Gordon Manley (1974):
http://www.rmets.org/pdf/qj74manley.pdf
This is a paper on temperatures in England 1772-1991 by Parker et al. (1992):
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/Parker_etalIJOC1992_dailyCET.pdf
Subjectively, I would imagine food prices would serve as a rather poor proxy. How many factors can you think of other than temperature that might affect these prices? There are many. Perhaps some of the farmers here can suggest a few. I have very little faith in any temperature record earlier than about the late 19th century. I question the instruments used and the methods employed.
The UAH satellite data clearly shows a cooling following the Mt. Pinatubo eruption so in my mind that establishes the link.
TomT says:
April 15, 2012 at 9:07 am
Cite?
w.
John West says:
April 15, 2012 at 10:31 am
There must have been a huge eruption in 1810, since the 1812 food prices are so high. /sarc
I don’t know what you are talking about, 1810 to 1813 appears to be the highest multi-year period of wheat prices in the record for decades to a century either side. The highest price was in 1812. Wheat in England is sensitive to temps/sunshine and precip. Unlike some other crops like peas and potatos which are relatively early crops in England.
Scott says:
April 15, 2012 at 9:05 am
Labs give degrees? Who knew? You might actually seem like you knew something if you took the trouble to spell my name right … you would never have gotten a degree from my lab.
w.
On the monthly UAH world temperature anomaly report, the 33-year satellite record shows its lowest dip at what is labeled the Mt. Pinatubo cooling in 1993. I’ve always wondered how much the monthly anomalies would have been affected had we not had the Pinatubo eruption.
Willis says:
“Cite?”
Really? It is well documented. http://wermenh.com/1816.html
Snow June 5th-11th, and if that didn’t do it, the hard frost on July 9th did. That summer sent a whole lot of people packing for the south and mid-west. A couple of very cold spells probably didn’t make much of a difference on a year long scale, but the crop failures sure did, especially when that’s ALL many did at the time. Sure, it’s likely hyperbole to call it a “year without summer”, but with total crop failures in many areas due to snow and frost in June-July, it might as well have been winter all year long as far as they were concerned….
I assume that during the Napoleon’s European experiment there was stockpiling of commodities by British government, increasing price to a large degree. Once Napoleon was defeated in Russia, there was huge surplus available throughout 1815 & 16, but if there was poor harvest in 1816 than prices would shoot up in 1817 again, but possibly not as high because of previous stockpiling.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/ECP1810-20.htm
Willis:
Your work here reveals an alarming absence of sophistication. You should know by now that crude temperature measuring instruments do not reveal actual temperatures to the precision required for “teasing out” the forcing signals of CO2, aerosols, sulphites, etc. To accomplish that end one must apply “sophisticated statistical techniques” which correct those crude readings.
Selecting the sophisticated statistical techniques to be applied is a relatively straightforward exercise, unless you are totally ignorant of the history of AGW. First, you must know what actual tenmperatures were. In this case, you know the “big boom” had just occurred, so you know temperatures the following summer had to have been very low. Then, you randomly apply various sophisticated statistical techniques to that original, crude data until “the signal” you are looking for emerges.
The temperature record is a noisy environment, Willis. You can’t expect to just haul off, read raw data and have it to reveal truth. That data must be ADJUSTED!
“The unusual cold in eastern N America might have been a consequence or it might just have been coincidental.”
The weather described for New Hampshire in 1816 sounds like the weather in Kapuskasing, Ontario, about 1000 km north of Toronto. Could it have been a stalling high pushing that south?
Just to reaffirm what some other commenters have noted (even if, heck, especially if they used my web page as the source), your arrows are pointing to the maximum temperature of the summer. From New England’s experience, you should be pointing at the daily low temperatures to highlight the length of the growing season.
I’m uncomfortable with this assumption, expressed here and elsewhere, that the size of an eruption affects the time it affects the climate. “Big” as in explosive eruptions, throw dust into the stratosphere. Dust is dust, and it settles out pretty quickly. The bigger concern is the SO2 that reaches the stratosphere and form a H2SO4 aerosol. These particles are a lot smaller and take more time to settle out.
However, I posit that the time for an individual droplet to settle out is not dependent on the density of droplets, just the starting height. So the only thing a “big” eruption has to offer is how high into the stratosphere it sends the aerosl. And that, as far as I know, is not tracked for any eruption until the 20th century, and probably not even until we started sending balloons and airplanes that high in the middle of the century.
It may be that the cooling due to the aerosol affects the ocean’s temperature, and that would have something looking like an exponential effect, but I suspect that would be really hard to measure, even in the satellite era.
Willis — There is good evidence for a biological negative feedback mechanism from marine phytoplankton. That may be an important part of the ‘thermostat’ that you find in the record.
http://www.co2science.org/subject/d/summaries/dms.php
From the summary —
“Dimethylsulfide or DMS is an organosulfur compound with the formula (CH3)2S. It is the most abundant biologically-produced sulfur compound to be found in the atmosphere, being emitted to the air primarily by marine phytoplankton. Perhaps its greatest claim to fame is that several years ago Charlson et al. (1987) discussed the plausibility of a multi-stage negative feedback process, whereby warming-induced increases in the emission of DMS from the world’s oceans tend to counteract the effects of the initial impetus for warming. The basic tenant of their hypothesis was that the global radiation balance is significantly influenced by the albedo of marine stratus clouds (the greater the cloud albedo, the less the input of solar radiation to the earth’s surface). The albedo of these clouds, in turn, is known to be a function of cloud droplet concentration (the more and smaller the cloud droplets, the greater the cloud albedo and the reflection of solar radiation), which is dependent upon the availability of cloud condensation nuclei on which the droplets form (the more cloud condensation nuclei, the more and smaller the cloud droplets). And in completing the negative feedback loop, Charlson et al. noted that the cloud condensation nuclei concentration often depends upon the flux of biologically-produced DMS from the world’s oceans (the higher the sea surface temperature, the greater the sea-to-air flux of DMS).
Since the publication of Charlson et al.’s initial hypothesis, much empirical evidence has been gathered in support of its several tenants. The review of Ayers and Gillett (2000), for example, concluded that “major links in the feedback chain proposed by Charlson et al. (1987) have a sound physical basis,” and that there is “compelling observational evidence to suggest that DMS and its atmospheric products participate significantly in processes of climate regulation and reactive atmospheric chemistry in the remote marine boundary layer of the Southern Hemisphere.”
But just how strong is the negative feedback phenomenon proposed by Charlson et al.? Is it powerful enough to counter the threat of greenhouse gas-induced global warming? According to the findings of Sciare et al. (2000), it may well be able to do just that, for in examining ten years of DMS data from Amsterdam Island in the southern Indian Ocean, these researchers found that a sea surface temperature increase of only 1°C was sufficient to increase the atmospheric DMS concentration by as much as 50%. This finding suggests that the degree of warming typically predicted to accompany a doubling of the air’s CO2 content would increase the atmosphere’s DMS concentration by a factor of three or more, providing what they call a “very important” negative feedback that could potentially offset the original impetus for warming.”
Great work Willis.
I’m emailing you, and copying Douglas Hoyt on this message.
Stop me when I “go outside the lines” but I think there is something very useful here. This point has probably been made previously, BUT:
I’ve been harping (since at least 2006) about the FABRICATED aerosol data that is used to fudge the climate computer models, particularly to force them to model (hindcast) the global cooling that occurred from ~1940-1975. I draw your attention to a 2006 statement by Doug Hoyt, the only expert I know on the subject of ACTUAL pre-1970 aerosol measurements:
Doug said in 2006 “In none of these studies were any long-term trends found in aerosols, although volcanic events show up quite clearly.”
SINCE
In none of these actual aerosol measurement studies, which go back to the 1880’s, were any long term trends (manmade or natural) found in aerosols, although volcanic events show up quite clearly
AND
You have apparently demonstrated that even major volcanos like Tambora (1816) have minimal impacts on Earth temperature, compared to natural variation
THEREFORE
Claims by CAGW climate modelers of SIGNIFICANT impacts of humanmade aerosols causing sufficient global cooling to offset their claims of dangerous CO2-driven global warming must be FALSE
AND
Claims by CAGW climate modelers that Climate Sensitivity to CO2* is approximately 3.5C must be greatly exaggerated.
Question for Douglas – do you have any aerosol data for Krakatoa (1883); other more recent (pre~1970) major volcanos?
Willis and Doug – please comment if you have the time.
Thanks and best regards, Allan