Tambora on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa: The explosive eruption of this volcano 200 years ago cooled the climate and lead to a year without a summer. (Photo: Jialiang Gao / Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0)
Why are volcanologists interested in vapour bubbles? Because they can accumulate in a magma reservoir underneath a volcano, priming it to explode. Researchers at ETH Zurich and Georgia Institute of Technology have now discovered how bubbles are able to accumulate in the magma. In 1816, summer failed to make an appearance in central Europe and people were starving. Just a year earlier, the Tambora volcano had erupted in Indonesia, spewing huge amounts of ash and sulphur into the atmosphere. As these particles partly blocked sunlight, cooling the climate, it had a serious impact on the land and the people, even in Switzerland. Since then, volcanologists have developed more precise ideas of why super-volcanoes such as Tambora are not only highly explosive but also why they release so much sulphur into the atmosphere. Gas bubbles tend to accumulate in the upper layers of magma reservoirs, which are only a few kilometres beneath the earth's surface, building up pressure that can then be abruptly liberated by eruption.
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