The year 1816 is known as the
Year Without a Summer (also the
Poverty Year and
Eighteen Hundred and Froze To Death)
[1]because of severe climate abnormalities that caused average global temperatures to decrease by 0.4–0.7 °C (0.7–1.3 °F).
[2] This resulted in major food shortages across the
Northern Hemisphere.
[3]
Evidence suggests that the anomaly was predominantly a
volcanic winter event caused by the massive
1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in the
Dutch East Indies (now
Indonesia). This eruption was the largest eruption in at least 1,300 years (after the
extreme weather events of 535–536), and perhaps exacerbated by the 1814 eruption of
Mayon in the Philippines.