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| A massive volcanic explosion in 1815 plunged global temperatures, creating the 1816 "Year Without A Summer." In Vermont and many other places around the world, the cold caused crop losses and suffering. Image from the New England Historical Society. |
The bad news the heat of climate change will also be no picnic.
A lot of you have heard of 1816 - the Year Without A Summer. The first eight days of June that year in Vermont were truly extraordinary. And something you're glad you won't experience.
I was perusing David Ludlum's "Vermont Weather Book" and it certainly is an understatement that week was truly depressing.
Ludlum quotes North Star editor Ebenezer Eaton of Danville as such:
"Melancholy weather. Some account was given in the last issue of the unparalleled severity of the weather. It continued without any essential amelioration, from the 6th to 10th instant - freezing as hard five nights in succession as it usually does in December.
On the night of the 6th, water froze an inch thick - on the night of the 7th and morning of the 8th, a kind of sleet or exceedingly cold snow fell, attended by high wind, and measured in places where it drifted 18 to 20 inches in depth.
Saturday morning (the 8th) the weather was more severe than it generally is during the storms of winter. It was indeed a gloomy and tedious period. The shoots of leaves of forest trees, which were just putting forth, and corn and garden vegetables that were out of the ground were mostly killed."
Ever the optimist, our buddy Ebenezer was in a better mood as the temperatures later warmed: "Since Monday (the 10th) the weather has been tolerably good; the citizens are recovering their spirits and the din of industry is again heard."
Some observations I thought of as I sit here in climate changed Vermont, 2022:
1. Why isn't anyone named Ebenezer anymore? I love that name.
2. More seriously, even without the the cold, and what took place immediately before this terrible 1816 cold snap, you can tell how much the climate has changed in the two centuries since 1816,
Notice Ebenezer said the forest trees were just putting forth leaves before the freeze hit. That now happens in mid May, not early June. The climate has really warmed.
3. Ebenezer's account, and that of others in New England, allows you to piece together the weather maps on that terrible week.
There had to be an unusually strong storm for this time of year in Quebec. That storm had a cold front dangling south from it. Ahead of that front here in Vermont, it was actually the kind of warm, humid day we expect this time of year in 2022 before a cold front passes. It was in the upper 70s to low 80s on June 5, 1816 with muggy showers and thunderstorms along and ahead of that cold front.
In 2022, an unusually strong cold front this time of year would plunge us into a couple of days with highs in the mid-50s and low 60s. There would be a frost threat in the cold hollows of the Northeast Kingdom. No biggie, really.
This was way different, of course. The cold front really meant business, and plunged Vermont into what is now considered pretty standard March weather. But in June.
The storm moving eastward through Quebec must have stalled and slowed down in the Canadian Maritimes and stayed strong. It would have rotated troughs, or little cold fronts through us from the northwest for a few days that week in June, 1816
In the winter, this is a classic setup for upslope snow. Northwest winds are forced to rise up the western slopes of the Green Mountains, and the the higher elevations of the Northeast Kingdom resulting in sometimes remarkably heavy snows in these regions. Vermont ski areas in the 2020s love this weather pattern in the winter. For farmers in June, 1816, not so much.
Eventually, the storm moved on and cold, Arctic high pressure would have moved in, clearing the skies and resulting in frigid overnight temperatures. Again, that's a common Vermont situation nowadays in March. But not June.
That ridge of high pressure would have moved to the east of New England after June 10, 1816, which resulted in more seasonable weather.
This wasn't the end of it, though. Further freezes in July and August kept wrecking crops, resulting in an economic crisis and hunger. Not only in Vermont but in many other places in the world.
The root cause of this horrible freeze was Mount Tambora, an Indonesian volcano that in 1815 blew up in extreme fashion, blasting 12 cubic miles of gases and dust and rocks into the atmosphere, as Smithsonian Magazine notes.
This stuff included a lot of sulphur dioxide, which is is quite effective at blocking the sun's heat. This plunged the world into a year or two of low temperatures, crop failure and famine. That is until the sulphur dioxide precipitated out of the atmosphere, restoring the globe into its previous, relatively stable climate.
The whole 1816 experience offers lessons for 2022 climate change. The Tambora eruption plunged the world into a serious climate disruption, with often fatal results.
Now, much like 1815, climate change and the emission of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels, is disrupting that kind of steady climate regime the world has more or less experienced for thousands of years.
Instead of the cold of 1816, we're experiencing the heat of fossil fuel driven climate change. We won't have the cold, weird disruptions of 1816. Instead, we're dealing with the hot, weird disruptions of global warming. We won't entirely know what awful things climate change will bring us down the road, but so far, it hasn't been good. And it will get worse. We just don't know all the details yet.
The climate crisis of 1816 eased when all that stuff from the Tambora volcano drained out of the atmosphere by 1817.
The current climate crisis won't be over nearly as quickly as in 1815-1817. Even if we quit emitting all those greenhouse gases five minutes from now, those gases will linger in the atmosphere for decades. We've created a new crisis that will only get worse. And more fatal.
We'd better brace ourselves. It's going to be a rough ride.
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