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The Sound So Loud That It Circled the Earth Four Times
A lithograph of the massive 1883 eruption of KrakatoaThe eruption of Krakatoa, and subsequent phenomena, 1888; Parker & Coward; via Wikipedia On 27 August 1883, the Earth let out a noise louder than any it has made since. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . It was...nautil.us
n August 27, 1883, the Earth let out a noise louder than any it has made since.
It was 10:02 a.m. local time when the sound emerged from the island of Krakatoa, which sits between Java and Sumatra in Indonesia. It was heard 1,300 miles away in the Andaman and Nicobar islands (“extraordinary sounds were heard, as of guns firing”); 2,000 miles away in New Guinea and Western Australia (“a series of loud reports, resembling those of artillery in a north-westerly direction”); and even 3,000 miles away in the Indian Ocean island of Rodrigues, near Mauritius (“coming from the eastward, like the distant roar of heavy guns.”)1 In all, it was heard by people in over 50 different geographical locations, together spanning an area covering a thirteenth of the globe.
The unfiltered reconstruction (Fig. 2a; Material and Methods) identified 1109 CE as experiencing one of the most extreme NH summer coolings of the last ~1500 years (rank 6) with temperatures of −1.3 °C relative to the 1961–1990 reference period.
Diverse societal impacts and responses to these weather conditions are revealed by our sources, starting in 1109 CE. In France, Belgium and England, persistent wet summer and autumn weather reduced crop yields in this year.