Climatic extreme events often seem distant and abstract – yet time and time again they have profoundly shaped societies. The eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815 triggered global climate anomalies that led to the «Year Without a Summer» in 1816, intensifying hunger and social crises across large parts of Europe. Such events reveal how closely natural processes and social orders are intertwined. This episode of the podcast by the Institute of History at the University of Bern asks what we can learn from this entanglement: How can climate data and historical sources be brought into dialogue? And what new perspectives emerge when climate science and history jointly trace the legacies of volcanic eruptions in past and present?
Niklaus Bartlome and Richard Warren are doctoral researchers in the interdisciplinary VICES project at the University of Bern, bringing together history and climate science. Their shared focus is on tracing how volcanic eruptions affect climate systems and societies, from local harvests to global connections. One product of this collaboration is ClimeApp, a digital web application that makes climate data accessible for historical research.
→ Research Project VICES
→ ClimeApp
