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I was just watching a documentary on the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia on April 10, 1815 and the summer of 1816 - the year without summer.
Climatologists are using records from European ships to chart the disruption of world climate by the eruption and the data corroborate the conclusions of paleo-climatologists studying the ice age.
Tambora reduced mean global temperatures by
2 degrees F and in some places - NE USA and Eastern Canada, the British Isles, Switzerland (Mary Shelley was writing Frankenstein), etc, up to 10 degrees F. In America Thomas Jefferson recorded daily temperatures as summer frosts and cold bitter rains destroyed crops in the hardest hit areas of the world.
But what caught my attention was the shipping records of the Atlantic hurricane season. Hurricane activity increased as temperatures decreased. Paleo-climatologists believe the intensity of storms increased during the last ice advance, storms far worse than those occuring during the subsequent inter-glacial - the past ~12,000 years.
Why? Whats going on? This seems counter-intuitive with the recent claims linking increased hurricane activity and global warming.
One possible explanation... During the ice age sea levels dropped by 400-500 feet. This would seem to reduce the available fuel for hurricanes, less water, more land, and of course, lower temperatures. But the lower sea levels also disrupted ocean currents reducing the Earth's ability to distribute heat away from equatorial regions to the poles. And as ice sheets expanded, solar radiation was reflected away from the surface. Could this have heated the upper levels of the atmosphere? Did the jet stream warm as surface temperatures dropped thereby providing an alternate source of fuel for storms, an even better source?
Tambora clearly reduced surface temperatures, but what effect did it have on the upper atmosphere and jet stream? The eruption blocked sunlight from reaching the surface but what effect did it have higher up? Did it trap solar radiation thereby creating a sort of heat inversion? Why did Tambora result in a worse Atlantic hurricane season?
Climatologists are using records from European ships to chart the disruption of world climate by the eruption and the data corroborate the conclusions of paleo-climatologists studying the ice age.
Tambora reduced mean global temperatures by
2 degrees F and in some places - NE USA and Eastern Canada, the British Isles, Switzerland (Mary Shelley was writing Frankenstein), etc, up to 10 degrees F. In America Thomas Jefferson recorded daily temperatures as summer frosts and cold bitter rains destroyed crops in the hardest hit areas of the world.
But what caught my attention was the shipping records of the Atlantic hurricane season. Hurricane activity increased as temperatures decreased. Paleo-climatologists believe the intensity of storms increased during the last ice advance, storms far worse than those occuring during the subsequent inter-glacial - the past ~12,000 years.
Why? Whats going on? This seems counter-intuitive with the recent claims linking increased hurricane activity and global warming.
One possible explanation... During the ice age sea levels dropped by 400-500 feet. This would seem to reduce the available fuel for hurricanes, less water, more land, and of course, lower temperatures. But the lower sea levels also disrupted ocean currents reducing the Earth's ability to distribute heat away from equatorial regions to the poles. And as ice sheets expanded, solar radiation was reflected away from the surface. Could this have heated the upper levels of the atmosphere? Did the jet stream warm as surface temperatures dropped thereby providing an alternate source of fuel for storms, an even better source?
Tambora clearly reduced surface temperatures, but what effect did it have on the upper atmosphere and jet stream? The eruption blocked sunlight from reaching the surface but what effect did it have higher up? Did it trap solar radiation thereby creating a sort of heat inversion? Why did Tambora result in a worse Atlantic hurricane season?
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