The Tambora project: an atmospheric simulation and historical evaluation of the Mount Tambora eruption and its impacts on global climate and society (1815-18)

Ciuro Sanchez, Darienne

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Description

Title

The Tambora project: an atmospheric simulation and historical evaluation of the Mount Tambora eruption and its impacts on global climate and society (1815-18)

Author(s)

Ciuro Sanchez, Darienne

Issue Date

2014-01-16T18:01:00Z

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Wuebbles, Donald J.

Department of Study

Atmospheric Sciences

Discipline

Atmospheric Sciences

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

M.S.

Degree Level

Thesis

Keyword(s)

• Tambora
• Climate Change
• Volcanic Emissions

Abstract

The Tambora Project reconstructs on a global scale the most destructive episode of abrupt climate change in the modern historical record. The volcanic sulfate veil produced by the Tambora eruption in the period 1815-18 depressed temperatures and disrupted storm tracks in monsoonal India, thereby likely initiating the first global cholera pandemic, while famine, refugeeism and civil unrest threatened hard-hit nations from China to Western Europe to New England. Tambora is thus an invaluable modern case-study in the impacts of abrupt, short-term climate change. Because of its impacts on the vulnerabilities of human communities to rapid changes in the climate system, a multidisciplinary collaboration between atmospheric science, computer modeling and humanistic analysis was developed in order to fully reconstruct this epochal global event. This project reviews the existing scientific and journalistic literature on Tambora and proposes a series of computer simulations that will better represent the climatic effects from the 1815 eruption and the contributions of the unfamiliar eruption of 1809 utilizing the Community Earth System Model (CESM), the most sophisticated modeling yet attempted for the Tambora eruption. The results will help fill in the extensive gaps in scientific knowledge regarding the global impact of the eruption. Marriage of these results with qualitative description from the historical record will enable the first comprehensive analysis of the global climate crisis of 1815-18. This thesis focuses on the scientific literature and modeling aspect of the project, specifically the climatic and atmospheric local and global impacts of the eruption.

Graduation Semester

2013-12

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/46746

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Copyright 2013 Darienne Ciuro

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