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It appears I may be wrong about this. Wikipedia says otherwise. But I clearly recall being told that by my math prof.

Oh well. Sorry.




He might have meant the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora


This is very likely:

'It was not until October that the first plausible explanation for “The Year without a Summer” was suggested. Friedrich Bessel, a German astronomer, reported seeing thick clouds of dust in the upper atmosphere. He theorized that these dust particles screened portions of Earth from the warming rays of the sun. It was discovered that in April 1815, Mount Tambora, an Indonesian volcano, had erupted with such force that it had sent an estimated 100 cubic miles of fine dust into the atmosphere. Witnesses to the eruption reported that the sky remained dark for two days. The dust then rose high into the stratosphere, where it encircled the world for several years to come.'

'Skeptics in 1816 doubted that a faraway volcano could steal their summer. However, most present-day researchers believe Bessel’s explanation to be generally correct, demonstrating the global nature of weather. The dust in the atmosphere eventually settled, and the spring of 1817 was back to normal.'

From https://shsatsunset.org/answers/q55-the-year-without-a-summe...

(I don't know the original source.)

Bessel could quite easily have used his math skills to try to explain a local earthquake as a consequence of this eruption.




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