Disproportionately strong climate forcing from extratropical explosive volcanic eruptions

Toohey, Matthew; Krüger, Kirstin; Schmidt, Hauke; Timmreck, Claudia; Sigl, Michael; Stoffel, Markus; Wilson, Rob (2019). Disproportionately strong climate forcing from extratropical explosive volcanic eruptions. Nature geoscience, 12(2), pp. 100-107. Springer Nature 10.1038/s41561-018-0286-2

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Extratropical volcanic eruptions are commonly thought to be less effective at driving large-scale surface cooling than tropical eruptions. However, recent minor extratropical eruptions have produced a measurable climate impact, and proxy records suggest that the most extreme Northern Hemisphere cold period of the Common Era was initiated by an extratropical eruption in 536 ce. Using ice-core-derived volcanic stratospheric sulfur injections and Northern Hemisphere summer temperature reconstructions from tree rings, we show here that in proportion to their estimated stratospheric sulfur injection, extratropical explosive eruptions since 750 ce have produced stronger hemispheric cooling than tropical eruptions. Stratospheric aerosol simulations demonstrate that for eruptions with a sulfur injection magnitude and height equal to that of the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption, extratropical eruptions produce time-integrated radiative forcing anomalies over the Northern Hemisphere extratropics up to 80% greater than tropical eruptions, as decreases in aerosol lifetime are overwhelmed by the enhanced radiative impact associated with the relative confinement of aerosol to a single hemisphere. The model results are consistent with the temperature reconstructions, and elucidate how the radiative forcing produced by extratropical eruptions is strongly dependent on the eruption season and sulfur injection height within the stratosphere.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

08 Faculty of Science > Physics Institute > Climate and Environmental Physics
10 Strategic Research Centers > Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research (OCCR)

UniBE Contributor:

Sigl, Michael

Subjects:

500 Science > 530 Physics
500 Science > 540 Chemistry
500 Science > 550 Earth sciences & geology

ISSN:

1752-0894

Publisher:

Springer Nature

Language:

English

Submitter:

Michael Sigl

Date Deposited:

08 Apr 2020 11:39

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 15:37

Publisher DOI:

10.1038/s41561-018-0286-2

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.142475

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/142475

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