Credit: Imperial College London Electrically charged volcanic ash short-circuited Earth's atmosphere in 1815, causing global poor weather and Napoleon's defeat, says new research. 
 
 Historians know that rainy and muddy conditions helped the Allied army defeat the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo. The June 1815 event changed the course of European history. 
 
 Two months prior, a volcano named Mount Tambora erupted on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa, killing 100,000 people and plunging the Earth into a 'year without a summer' in 1816. 
 
 Now, Dr. Matthew Genge from Imperial College London has discovered that electrified volcanic ash from eruptions can 'short-circuit' the electrical current of the ionosphere—the upper level of the atmosphere that is responsible for cloud formation. 
 
 The findings, published today in Geology, could confirm the suggested link between the eruption and Napoleon's defeat. 
 
 Dr. Genge, from Imperial's Department of Earth Science and Engineering, suggests that the Tambora eruption short-circuited the ionosphere, ultimately leading to a pulse of cloud formation. This brought heavy rain across Europe that contributed to Napoleon Bonaparte's defeat. 
 
 The paper shows that eruptions can hurl ash much higher than previously thought into the atmosphere—up to 100 kilometres above ground. 
 
 Dr. Genge said: "Previously, geologists thought that volcanic ash gets trapped in the lower atmosphere, because volcanic plumes rise buoyantly. My research, however, shows that ash can be shot into the upper atmosphere by electrical forces." 
 
 Levitating volcanic ash 
 
 A series of experiments showed that that electrostatic forces could lift ash far higher than by buoyancy alone. Dr. Genge created a model to calculate how far charged volcanic ash could levitate, and found that particles smaller than 0.2 millionths of a metre in diameter could reach the ionosphere during large eruptions. 
 
 He said: "Volcanic plumes and ash both can have negative electrical charges and thus the plume repels the ash, propelling it high in the atmosphere. The effect works very much like the way two magnets are pushed away from each other if their poles match." 
 
 The experimental results are consistent with historical records from other eruptions. 
 
 Weather records are sparse for 1815, so to test his theory, Dr. Genge examined weather records following the 1883 eruption of another Indonesian volcano, Krakatau. 
 
 The data showed lower average temperatures and reduced rainfall almost immediately after the eruption began, and global rainfall was lower during the eruption than either period before or after. 
 
 Ionosphere disturbances and rare clouds 
 
 He also found reports of ionosphere disturbance after the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, Philippines, which could have been caused by charged ash in the ionosphere from the volcano plume. 
 
 In addition, a special cloud type appeared more frequently than usual following the Krakatau eruption. Noctilucent clouds are rare and luminous, and form in the ionosphere. Dr. Genge suggests these clouds therefore provide evidence for the electrostatic levitation of ash from large volcanic eruptions. 
 
 Dr. Genge said: "Vigo Hugo in the novel Les Miserables said of the Battle of Waterloo: 'an unseasonably clouded sky sufficed to bring about the collapse of a World.' Now we are a step closer to understanding Tambora's part in the Battle from half a world away." 
 
 Explore further: Health concerns rise along with Hawaii eruptions 
 
 More information: Matthew J. Genge, Electrostatic levitation of volcanic ash into the ionosphere and its abrupt effect on climate, Geology (2018). DOI: 10.1130/G45092.1 
 
 ||||| 1. When Napoleon met his Waterloo, he wasn’t actually in Waterloo. 
 
 In spite of its moniker, the battle was waged three miles south of the town of Waterloo in the villages of Braine-l’Alleud and Plancenoit along the Mont Saint Jean Ridge. While the French referred to the military clash as the “Battle of Mont Saint-Jean,” it became known in most of the world as the “Battle of Waterloo” because the Duke of Wellington, who led the victorious forces, made his headquarters in the village and the dateline written on the official report he sent back to Britain ultimately became linked in popular memory with the battle. “Napoleon never set a foot in Waterloo—it’s a fact,” Belgian historian and former Waterloo resident Bernard Coppens told the Wall Street Journal. 
 
 2. British troops comprised only a minority of Wellington’s forces. 
 
 The Duke of Wellington at Waterloo. 
 
 The Duke of Wellington may have been British, but the army he led into battle was a multi-national force. British troops represented only one-third of Wellington’s army, and the majority of those soldiers were Irish, Welsh and Scottish. (Wellington himself was born in Ireland and of Anglo-Irish ancestry.) Approximately half of Wellington’s forces hailed from German states, and Dutch and Belgian soldiers fought in sizable numbers as well. In addition to Wellington’s army, more than 50,000 Prussians under Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blucher arrived at the battlefield in the late afternoon and turned the tide of the fight. 
 
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 3. A defeated Napoleon considered an escape to the United States. 
 
 Following the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon returned to Paris, where he was forced to abdicate on June 22, 1815. He fled to the coastal city of Rochefort, from where he likely intended to sail to the United States, which had just concluded its own war with Great Britain. “You must have heard of the new misfortune of the emperor,” wrote one of Napoleon’s relatives to another in the wake of his abdication. “He’s going to the United States, where we shall all join him.” British ships, however, had blockaded Rochefort, and the former emperor did not want to risk the potential embarrassment of being caught hiding on board a vessel. With his passage to the United States blocked, Napoleon surrendered to a British warship on July 15, 1815, and three months later he was exiled to the remote South Atlantic island of St. Helena, where he lived out his final six years until his death in 1821. Napoleon’s brother Joseph, the deposed king of Spain, was able to make safe passage to the United States from another French port and lived in New Jersey for 15 years. Fleeing Bonapartists also established the short-lived Vine and Olive Colony in Alabama as a safe haven. 
 
 4. Wet weather caused a fatal delay by Napoleon. 
 
 Plans of the Battle of Waterloo. 
 
 Heavy rain fell upon the region around Waterloo on the night before the battle. Napoleon’s artillery was among his greatest strengths, but the French emperor feared that the soggy and muddy conditions would bog down the advance of his men, horses and heavy guns. Hoping that the ground would dry, Napoleon waited until midday to launch his attack. The delay would prove costly as it ultimately allowed Blucher’s Prussian army to join the fight before the French could defeat Wellington’s forces. 
 
 5. Hemorrhoids may have been Napoleon’s true Waterloo. 
 
 As detailed in Phil Mason’s book “Napoleon’s Hemorrhoids: And Other Small Events That Changed History,” some scholars believe the French military leader suffered a painful bout of hemorrhoids on the morning of the Battle of Waterloo that prevented him from riding his horse to survey the battlefield as was his custom and could have contributed to his defeat. However, Waterloo expert Alasdair White told the New York Times that the story is “an absolute myth” concocted by Napoleon boosters because they “cannot believe that the great man lost, so there must have been something wrong with him.” 
 
 6. Scavengers harvested “Waterloo teeth” from dead soldiers to make dentures. 
 
 Napoleon Bonaparte 
 
 Within hours of the battle’s end, locals employing pliers as well as small hammers and chisels began to remove the front teeth from tens of thousands of soldiers lying dead on the battlefield. With demand for human teeth high, the looters sold the pilfered teeth to dentists who crafted them into dentures. According to England’s National Army Museum, English dentists did nothing to conceal their sources, advertising the dentures as “Waterloo teeth” or “Waterloo ivory.” Even by the time of the Civil War, English dentists continued to do a brisk trade importing the teeth of fallen soldiers, still referred to as “Waterloo teeth.” 
 
 7. The Duke of Wellington pocketed a sizable tribute. 
 
 The peace treaty agreed to between France and the European powers in November 1815 reduced the size of French territory and required the defeated country to pay an enormous indemnity over the course of five years. In recognition of his service, Parliament awarded the Duke of Wellington 200,000 British pounds, equivalent to 15 million British pounds today, according to the Royal Engineers Museum.
– Here's an unexpected theory: that Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo in June 1815 was partly caused by the eruption of an volcano in Indonesia. It's a suggestion tacked onto the end of a study by Dr. Matthew Genge of the Imperial College London published Wednesday in Geology. Titled "Electrostatic levitation of volcanic ash into the ionosphere and its abrupt effect on climate," much of the findings focus on the 1883 eruption of the Krakatau volcano in Indonesia. Genge writes that "conventional wisdom suggests" eruptions can't inject volcanic particles into the upper atmosphere "because the temperature inversion of the stratosphere acts as a barrier to convective rise"; ergo, these eruptions wouldn't have a meaningful impact on the upper atmosphere. But as Genge explains in a press release, "My research ... shows that ash can be shot into the upper atmosphere by electrical forces"—and "atmospheric electrical potential moderates cloud formation." His research into that Krakatau eruption and the average air temperature and precipitation records from the time unearthed data "consistent with a sudden effect on climate." And that takes us to Waterloo: The rainy and muddy weather is thought to have played a role in Napoleon's defeat, and Genge notes in a single paragraph that May and June 1815 are known to have been "notably wet in Europe" following the late April eruption of the Tambora volcano, which is also found in Indonesia and erupted at a greater magnitude than Krakatau. As the release notes, the findings "could confirm the suggested link between the eruption and Napoleon's defeat."