Before you read: what do you think the following words mean?

• ash • gunfire
• uninhabited • sunlight
• coastal • harbour
• area • drown

When Krakatoa Blew: How the 1883 Eruption Changed the World

By: Patrick J. Kiger | Nov 25, 2020 Adapted for classroom use by Y. Megzari

In May 1883, the captain of a German warship observed a column of smoke and ash
that he estimated be 2 kilometres tall, rising into the sky over an uninhabited
mountainous island between Java and Sumatra in Indonesia. Over the next few
months, other ships noticed loud noises from the island, whose Indonesian name was
Krakatau – though it would later become famous as Krakatoa.
Finally, on 27 August 1883, a colossal volcanic eruption demolished Krakatoa,
causing two-thirds of it to fall into the sea, and generated huge lava and ash flows. The
explosion also caused immense tsunamis that inundated hundreds of coastal towns
and villages, causing the deaths of an estimated 36,000 people.
The Krakatoa eruption produced the loudest sound in modern history. On the
island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, more than 4,600 kilometres away, people
heard what sounded like distant gunfire.
As Krakatoa blew up, it sent around 21 cubic kilometres (km³) of rock into the
air. Ash from the explosion rose 80 kilometres up – 9 times the height of Mt Everest –
and covered an area of 777,000 square kilometres (km²) – almost the size of Turkey!
The ash enveloped the planet and filtered out enough sunlight to lower global
temperatures as much as 0.5 degrees Celsius for an entire year.
As scary as the volcanic eruption itself was, the gigantic tsunamis created by
Krakatoa were even deadlier. Some of the waves reached Hawaii and even South
America, on the other side of the Pacific. But the destruction mostly happened in the
Indonesian archipelago. Waves as tall as 41 metres – the height of a 14-storey building
– crashed into coastal cities, towns and villages on the islands of Java and Sumatra. In
Batavia — now Jakarta – 2,000 Chinese immigrants who lived around the harbour
were drowned.
 Though the eruption destroyed most of the original volcano, it didn't completely
disappear. Instead, 43 years later, a portion emerged from the sea as a new island, Anak
Krakatoa. 89 years later, in December 2018, Anak Krakatoa erupted, sending out a
wave of water that caused the deaths of more than 400 people.

Krakatoa
1883 eruption
(200,000 kt)

After you read: answer the following questions.

1. When did Krakatoa erupt?
______________________________________________________
2. Where did the eruption sound like “distant gunfire”?
______________________________________________________
3. Why did global temperatures drop by 0.5° Celsius?
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4. What was Jakarta called in 1883?
______________________________________________________
5. What happened in December 2018?
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