1816: The Year There Was No Summer

1816: The Year There Was No Summer

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Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Steve Fermier
  • Dr. Raghu Murtugudde of the University of Maryland talked with WBAL's Steve Fermier about recent climate events and their possible relationship to the persistent cold pattern.
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  • (AP)


Is this winter ever going to end?

At least one authority on the global climate offers some assurance it will.  That's even though it seems to drag on and despite some historical evidence one year it actually didn't.

A University of Maryland climatology professor says the weather pattern that has set record-upon-record across the lower 48 likely reflects a pattern that has been "stuck" since 1998.

That's when the eastern Pacific "La Nina" pattern emerged and has been influencing weather in the hemisphere since then.   The La Ninas, and the similar El Ninos, don't last forever.

Dr. Raghu Murtugudde of the Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Department at the University of Maryland says the current pattern of extended extreme cold weather will be ending.  He can't say just when, exactly, only that it will.

Dr. Murtugudde disagrees that the "polar vortex" moving so far south is being caused by the melting of polar ice, one theory that has been put forward to explain the recent bitter cold.  

Instead, he posits that it's a pattern that reflects the east Pacific Ocean's being "stuck."   That, he said, causes temperature change in the northern hemisphere.  

There was one year when winter simply did not let go across the globe.

The main reason:  In 1816, a volcanic eruption in Tambora, Indonesia caused the atmosphere to filter more sun and less light came down to the surface.  That followed a series of smaller volcanic eruptions worldwide.  The result was a mere 1 degree average global temperature decrease.  That doesn't sound like much, Murtugudde said, but it was enough to set into motion a series of catastrophic weather events across the globe.

Those included a dramatic drop in daily temperatures, well into the summer months.

Snow and ice persisted to June as far south as Pennsylvania.  Also there were massive floods, and crops failed from frost.    

This winter's cold weather is not attributable to volcanic eruption, he said.

"It's just something the weather is capable of doing," he said. 

 "I think we'll see spring soon," Dr. Murtugudde said.