The documented rainfall was as much as 80 percent more than the calculated normal with regards to 1816, with unusually high amounts of snow in Switzerland, France, Germany, and Poland. This is again contrasted by the unusually low precipitations in 1818, which caused droughts throughout most of Europe and Asia. (Auchmann et al. 2012) Russia had already experienced unseasonably warm and dry summers since 1815 and this continued for the next three years. There are also documented reductions in ocean temperature near the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, and the Mediterranean Sea. This seems to have been an indicator of shifted oceanic circulation patterns and possibly changed wind direction and speed. (Meronen et al. 2012) This is further supported by the a British fleet sent to explore the Arctic Circle. They found large ice sheets miles off the coast of Greenland, where two years prior they had been limited to the near-shore waters of eastern Greenland. Contemporary scientists have attributed the Year Without a Summer to the drifting polar ice sheets rather than the eruption of Tambora because of their proximity to England.