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I have found quite a bit of information on the farming and societal effects of the volcanic eruption of Mt Tambora in 1815, but they all talk about North America, Europe and Asia.

I wondered if there were effects of temperature changes in Africa as well, but could not find any information. I am mainly interested in eye witness reports and just out of curiosity. From a map which I found on wikipedia it seems that Northern Africa was affected.

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Awesome first question, welcome to History.SE! – Yannis Rizos Dec 21 '12 at 21:28

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I found a bizarre article looking at the summer of 1816 from the accounts of ships' logbooks.

the part concerning Africa in the abstract "an active and northward-displaced intertropical zone in most areas from Mexico eastward to Africa". I can't check the full text now, but it probably has something.

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Interesting. If it messed with the monsoon trade winds typically used for navagation between Africa/Arabia and the far east that year, along with the circular currents in the Atlantic that are used to speed navigation to the New World and between Europe and the Horn, that would have been a really big deal. – T.E.D.♦ Dec 21 '12 at 21:53
I really like the article! It does not only talk about North Africa, but also about the Southern hemisphere, something I would not have expected. You labeled the article "bizarre" and it might well be, but I'd have to rely on your judgement. Do you think, it is bizarre because of its style, its unusual topic or because it was not behind a paywall (indicating peer-review)? I am genuinely interested, as I do not know anything about publications related to history. – Sebastian Langer Jan 16 at 0:23
Judging from the article, quite a few nowadays dry areas in Africa would have gotten a lot of rain. Of course that does not say, that it was beneficial to agriculture, as it was unexpected. I am even more interested in eye witness reports now! – Sebastian Langer Jan 16 at 0:25
It's a good article, thanks for summarising it. It's just that collating ships logbooks to collect weather information had not occurred to me. – Nathan Cooper Jan 16 at 2:18

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