Sydneysiders wondering why the summer of 2023 has yet to arrive might consider the plight of those who lived through a year in which summer didn’t show up at all.

That was 1816, “the year without a summer”, an anomaly brought about by the largest volcanic events in recorded human history.

The explosion of Mount Tambora, Indonesia in 1815 rocked the entire planet. Reportedly heard more than 2000 kms away, the eruption reduced the mountain’s height by a third, directly and secondarily killed more than 60,000 people, and ejected massive dust clouds into the atmosphere, where they lingered, circling the globe and reducing the global Earth Surface Temperature by an estimated 1C.

It doesn’t sound like much, but it was more than enough to disrupt weather patterns throughout Asia and produce torrential rains in China and India. Reduced sunlight light and freakish cold spells led to failed harvests throughout Europe, precipitating price rises, social unrest, epidemic illness and mass migration.

That year without a summer made its mark in the arts, too. Historians have noted that paintings of the period (landscapes by JMW Turner and Casper David Friedrich, for example) feature reddened and hazy skies, the result of fine dust suspended in the...