I'm a Summer kind of guy.  I love Summer.  I spent over a year in south Florida in one stretch and it was great.  It was the longest Summer I had, until years later when I worked at a college planetarium in the United Arab Emirates.  That was Summer to the max.  We stayed there three and a half years, apart from travel back to the U.S. during Summer recesses.  It was always Summer, and it was good. 

I don't know why, but this year I've pretty much had it with the Summer.  Maybe it was the mix of hot days and almost no rain for weeks, though that was certainly the case in Dubai.  I guess I'm just getting older - bring on the Fall!

I introduce the blog this week in this way to contrast this Summer to what happened 200 years ago - 1816, the "year without a Summer."  Read more about it here.  

To summarize - during the Summer of 1816 there were severe frosts every month.  Crops were drastically reduced, leading to famine across the U.S., Europe, and China.  New England was particularly hit hard.

What caused the "year without a Summer?"  It has been attributed to the ash in the atmosphere from the 1815 volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora (now in Indonesia).  This was the largest volcanic eruption in at least 1300 years, and lowered the global average temperature by about 1ºC.  That small temperature change can and will make a big difference. 

So I will try to not complain about the Summer this year, but I'm still looking forward to Autumn... :)

Marc R.
www.bluestarplanetarium.com