Krakatoa sunset

In August 1883 a series of cataclysmic volcanic eruptions destroyed two thirds of the island of Krakatoa in Java (now Indonesia). A series of immense earthquakes and tsunamis followed.  The official death toll exceeded 23,000.The pressure wave was recorded around the world and the global climate was affected by smoke and ash in the atmosphere for several years. The lingering debris produced fiery colours in the evening sky; these became known as Krakatoa sunsets. These were a bonus for European artists such as William Ascroft. It's also been suggested that Edward Munch's Scream depicts the same vivid effects of the distant eruption. 

Literary fall-out can be found in the work of Swinburne, Byron and Tennyson: 

Had the fierce ashes of some fiery peak
Been hurl’d so high they ranged about the globe?
For day by day, thro’ many a blood-red eve . . . 
The wrathful sunset glared  
etc. 

However the most enduring literary legacy of Krakatoa must surely lie in the meticulous  descriptions conjured up by the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins  and published by the science journal Nature in 1884.

Above the green in turn appeared a red glow, broader and burlier in make; it was softly brindled, and in the ribs or bars the colour was rosier, in the channels where the blue of the sky shone through it was a mallow colour. Above this was a vague lilac. The red was first noticed 45º above the horizon, and spokes or beams could be seen in it, compared by one beholder to a man’s open hand. By 4.45 the red had driven out the green, and, fusing with the remains of the orange, reached the horizon. By that time the east, which had a rose tinge, became of a duller red, compared to sand; according to my observation, the ground of the sky in the east was green or else tawny, and the crimson only in the clouds. A great sheet of heavy dark cloud, with a reefed or puckered make, drew off the west in the course of the pageant: the edge of this and the smaller pellets of cloud that filed across the bright field of the sundown caught a livid green.  At 5 the red in the west was fainter, at 5.20 it became notably rosier and livelier; but it was never of a pure rose. A faint dusky blush was left as late as 5.30, or later. While these changes were going on in the sky, the landscape of Ribblesdale glowed with a frowning brown.


See here for more on this.