
In 1883, Krakatau’s dormant volcano erupted to stupendous effect, obliterating its three islands, and killing tens of thousands of people.
The sound of the eruption alone… “was heard as far as 3,000 miles…the equivalent of a blast in Dublin being heard in New York. Half the crew of British ship some 40 miles away reported having their ear drums “shattered”—if they had been closer, they might well have been killed by the force of the sound alone...
“the subsequent tsunami…reached over a hundred feet (30 meters) in height, sweeping 165 coastal villages and settlements out to sea. The wave is said to have traveled around the globe three and a half times at astonishing speed, causing tsunamis as far as South Africa and flinging huge chunks of coral reef onto the land as it went. Some of these sections of coral weighed as much as 600 tons…
There was a lasting effect on the world’s climate, too: aerosols emitted into the atmosphere by the blast led global air temperatures to drop by as much as 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.2 degrees Celsius).
According to a 2006 article in the journal Nature, the volcano caused oceans to cool for as much as a century, offsetting the effect of human activity on ocean temperatures. If the volcano had not erupted, the authors argue, our sea levels might be much higher than they are today.
Continue reading “14) Climate Change Is Rapid, Widespread And Intensifying”

