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The Year Without a Summer: The Benefits
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Akira Knaff
Mar 1, 2004, 1:41:25 PM3/1/04
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http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/disaster/boom.jsp
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But not all the consequences of Tambora (volcano) were bad. The appalling weather
famously upset the poet Lord Byron and his guests Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley
as they holidayed on the shores of Lake Geneva. They became so caught up in the
gloom that they spent the summer reading ghost stories. Mary Shelley wrote
Frankenstein, and Byron wrote a poem called Darkness which, according to Robock,
"sounds like the beginning of a nuclear winter".
>>
The English landscape painter William Turner became famous in the
art world for his sunsets. But only much later did it become clear that he
was painting skies full of dust from Tambora. The glowing images he saw
were caused by sunlight scattering off volcanic dust.
>>
But not all the consequences of Tambora (volcano) were bad. The appalling weather
famously upset the poet Lord Byron and his guests Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley
as they holidayed on the shores of Lake Geneva. They became so caught up in the
gloom that they spent the summer reading ghost stories. Mary Shelley wrote
Frankenstein, and Byron wrote a poem called Darkness which, according to Robock,
"sounds like the beginning of a nuclear winter".
>>
The English landscape painter William Turner became famous in the
art world for his sunsets. But only much later did it become clear that he
was painting skies full of dust from Tambora. The glowing images he saw
were caused by sunlight scattering off volcanic dust.
Perhaps the eruption's biggest benefit came eventually to Sumbawa and its
neighbours. Ash from Tambora boosted the fertility of soils on the islands.
Bali became a rice exporter and the value of the ash is still being reaped in the
paddy fields today.
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