Tambora 1815: How Climate Change Shaped the Nineteenth-Century World

Wood, Gillen

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/107832 Copy

Description

Title

Tambora 1815: How Climate Change Shaped the Nineteenth-Century World

Author(s)

Wood, Gillen

Issue Date

2011-04-20

Keyword(s)

• climate change
• Mt. Tambora

Abstract

"Gillen Wood - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign English Dept. and Director of the Sustainability Studies Initiative in the Humanities. What happens when the world's climate reaches a sudden tipping point? The devastating two-year aftermath of the eruption of Mt. Tambora in Indonesia in 1815 is the nearest historical case-study we have for better understanding the social, environmental, and economic impacts of abrupt climate change, as predicted by the 2007 IPCC Report for this century. Approaching the 200th anniversary of the massive eruption of Tambora, The Tambora Project reconstructs on a global scale, and in multimedia formats, the most destructive episode of worldwide climate change in modern history. 1816, the so-called ""year without a summer,"" disrupted monsoons in India that contributed to a new and devastating strain of cholera, while crop failure and famine crippled nations from China to Western Europe to New England, precipitating mass immigration of refugees and the wholesale destabilization of civil society. The Tambora Project, a comprehensive investigation of the climate emergency of 1815-17, will provide important lessons not only for historians, but also scientists, economists and policymakers tasked with responding to today's climate crisis. The project, with its range of interdisciplinary collaborations and variety of accessible formats, will also be directed toward students and the general public, to better inform and prepare them for the impacts of global climate change on societies in the 21 st century."

Series/Report Name or Number

Sustainable Seminar Series

Type of Resource

moving image

Language

en

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/107832

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