The biggest volcanic eruption in recorded history was Mount Tambora in Indonesia in 1815, which caused a year without summer and killed 10,000 people. The largest eruption in human history was Mt. Toba, and the largest in Earth’s history was the Siberian Traps, which caused the largest mass extinction.
The largest volcanic eruption in recorded history is that of Mount Tambora on the island of Sumbawa, Indonesia. Taking place on April 10, 1815, the eruption was so strong that it sounded like shooting to people on the island of Sumatra, 2,600 km (1,615 miles) away. In the last three thousand years there has been only one major eruption: that of Mt. Taupo, New Zealand in AD 181 However, as no historians – in fact, no humans – were in New Zealand at the time, the largest volcanic eruption in history remains Mt. Tambora.
Signs of the eruption began as a dark cloud of ash formed over the mountain and the ground began to rumble. Several minor eruptions occurred over several days. Thousands of people witnessed the eruption. At 7:10 on April 100, three columns of flames “rose and merged” and the mountain turned into “liquid fire”. About 3 km38.6 (3 mi7) of pyroclastic trachyandesite were ejected, enough to qualify as 10,000 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index. All the vegetation on the island has been destroyed. XNUMX people were killed in the pyroclastic flows.
The eruption ejected enough ash into the upper atmosphere to block out some of the Sun’s light for months on end. This caused 1816 to be called The Year Without a Summer, in which crops failed worldwide and at least 300,000 people starved or froze. On the plus side, atmospheric dust from the volcanic explosion caused interesting optical effects, including the most spectacular sunsets in history.
The year without summer was hard. Two massive snowstorms hit eastern Canada and New England in mid-June. Nearly a foot of snow fell in Quebec City. As a result, the price of oats and other grains has increased by about 700%. The event has been called “the last major livelihood crisis in the Western world.”
Although the explosion of Mt. Tambora was big, it’s not the biggest volcanic eruption in all of human history – just recorded history. The largest volcanic eruption in all human history is that of the former Mt. Toba. This was about 28 times larger than the 1815 eruption, and it is believed that the global human population may have been reduced to as few as 1,000 breeding pairs in the aftermath of the event.
The largest volcanic eruption in Earth’s history was probably the series of eruptions 251 million years ago that created the Siberian Traps, a rock formation in what is now Russia. These eruptions lasted about a million years and released nearly enough lava to cover the Australian continent in a layer 1,000m deep. This event triggered the largest mass extinction in Earth’s history, during which 96 percent of all marine species and 70 percent of land vertebrates were wiped out.
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