Year Without Summer

Year Without Summer

The year 1816 is known as the Year Without a Summer because of severe climate abnormalities that caused average global temperatures to decrease by 0.4–0.7 °C (0.7–1 °F). Summer temperatures in Europe were the coldest of any on record between the years of 1766 and 2000. This resulted in major food shortages across the Northern Hemisphere.Evidence suggests that the anomaly was predominantly a volcanic winter event caused by the massive 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in April in the Dutch East Indies (known today as Indonesia). This eruption was the largest in at least 1,300 years (after the hypothesized eruption causing the volcanic winter of 536); its effect in the climate may have been exacerbated by the 1814 eruption of Mayon in the Philippines.

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