How Volcano-Induced Climate Change Gave Birth To A Monster

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein's Monster was inspired by the devastating results of a volcanic eruption. 1816 was the Year Without a Summer, when the world was cold and dark. All across western Europe, crops failed as the sun did not shine and millions went hungry and perished. The incident that caused it? The largest volcanic eruption on record, Tambora, which occurred in April 1815. "By shooting its contents into the stratosphere with biblical force, Tambora ensured its volcanic gases reached sufficient height to disable the seasonal rhythms of the global climate system, throwing human communities worldwide into chaos. The sun-dimming stratospheric aerosols produced by Tambora’s eruption in 1815 spawned the most devastating, sustained period of extreme weather seen on our planet in perhaps thousands of years."

Locals that were not killed by the eruption and its immediate aftermath suffered from disease and starvation. Observers worldwide witnessed strangely colored skies, biting winds, snows that wouldn't melt, electric storms. It was in these conditions that Shelley and her companions told ghost stories to pass the dark days. "Thus it was that the unique creative synergies of this remarkable group of college-age tourists—in the course of a few weeks’ biblical weather—gave birth to two singular icons of modern popular culture: Frankenstein’s monster and the Byronic Dracula."

This piece is an incredible long read describing volcanic activity and climate phenomena in great depth with literary flair. It is a wonderful mingling of science and literature, in which "the Tambora climate emergency of 1815–18 offers us a rare, clear window onto a world convulsed by weather extremes, with human communities everywhere struggling to adapt to sudden, radical shifts in temperatures and rainfall, and a flow-on tsunami of famine, disease, dislocation, and unrest. It is a case study in the fragile interdependence of human and natural systems."