In 1815, Indonesia's Mount Tambora volcano erupted, creating unprecedented hell. The Mount Tambora eruption has since been recorded as the most powerful volcanic eruption ever recorded.
The eruption of this Indonesian volcano in the early 1800s had major consequences. A huge plume of tiny solar-reflecting particles was blown high into the atmosphere, cooling the planet. And what followed is known in world history as 'the year without a summer'. Indeed, global temperatures plummeted, but crops also failed, people starved, a cholera pandemic spread and tens of thousands of people died.
And now a good 200 years later, scientists are warning that such a gigantic eruption might happen again.
'It will happen'
“The question is not even if, but when,” says Markus Stoffel, a respected climate professor at the University of Geneva, tells the Nature.com website. This time, however, such an outburst would happen in a vastly changed world, a world that is not only more densely populated.
Longer-term consequences could also be catastrophic. “A temperature drop of 1 degree Celsius may sound small, but it is an average. If we look at certain regions, the impact will be much larger,” May Chim, an earth scientist at the University of Cambridge told Nature.com.
Scientists fear complete climate chaos, marked by successive extreme weather phenomena, and even problems for aviation due to the volcanic eruption spewing sulfur dioxide through the troposphere.