Keele Research Repository

The year 2015 marks the bicentenary of the largest eruption in recent historic times: the 10–11 April 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora, Indonesia. Two hundred years after the eruption, an incomplete or inaccurate record of large eruptions over the past millennia, and uncertainties in determining the true sizes of eruptions, hamper our ability to predict when the next eruption of this scale may occur. Such events would have catastrophic effects locally and, possibly, world‐wide. The problem is compounded by a lack of detailed knowledge of how and over what timescales large magma reservoirs that feed such eruptions grow and assemble, and of the surface manifestations of these processes recorded through geophysical or geochemical monitoring techniques.