It seems that there’s a paper (from JeanPaul Vernier at NASA) out that contradicts the findings of Kaufmann et al 2011, where they blame China’s increasing coal consumption for lack of warming in the past decade saying coal use is adding aerosol particles into the atmosphere that reflect sunlight and therefore cool the planet. [Update, see caveat at end of this post] But in Vernier et al in press at GRL, they say
Recently, the trend, based on ground-based lidar measurements, has been tentatively attributed to an increase of SO(2) entering the stratosphere associated with coal burning in Southeast Asia. However, we demonstrate with these satellite measurements that the observed trend is mainly driven by a series of moderate but increasingly intense volcanic eruptions primarily at tropical latitudes.
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Dr B Basil Beamish writes in Tips and Notes:
Anthony,
Here is a new paper hot off the press that seems to contradict the recent concept of cooling temperatures from China’s coal use.
Author(s): Vernier, JP (Vernier, J. -P.)1,2; Thomason, LW (Thomason, L. W.)1; Pommereau, JP (Pommereau, J. -P.)2; Bourassa, A (Bourassa, A.)3; Pelon, J (Pelon, J.)2; Garnier, A (Garnier, A.)2; Hauchecorne, A (Hauchecorne, A.)2; Blanot, L (Blanot, L.)2,4; Trepte, C (Trepte, C.)1; Degenstein, D (Degenstein, Doug)3; Vargas, F (Vargas, F.)5
Source: GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS Volume: 38 Article Number: L12807 DOI: 10.1029/2011GL047563 Published: JUN 30 2011
Abstract:
The variability of stratospheric aerosol loading between 1985 and 2010 is explored with measurements from SAGE II, CALIPSO, GOMOS/ENVISAT, and OSIRIS/Odin space-based instruments. We find that, following the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, stratospheric aerosol levels increased by as much as two orders of magnitude and only reached “background levels” between 1998 and 2002. From 2002 onwards, a systematic increase has been reported by a number of investigators. Recently, the trend, based on ground-based lidar measurements, has been tentatively attributed to an increase of SO(2) entering the stratosphere associated with coal burning in Southeast Asia. However, we demonstrate with these satellite measurements that the observed trend is mainly driven by a series of moderate but increasingly intense volcanic eruptions primarily at tropical latitudes. These events injected sulfur directly to altitudes between 18 and 20 km. The resulting aerosol particles are slowly lofted into the middle stratosphere by the Brewer-Dobson circulation and are eventually transported to higher latitudes. Citation: Vernier, J.-P., et al. (2011), Major influence of tropical volcanic eruptions on the stratospheric aerosol layer during the last decade, Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, L12807, doi:10.1029/2011GL047563.
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It seems the Calipso satellite is designed specifically for this task. From Spie.org:
Since June 2006, the Cloud-Aerosol and Lidar Infrared Pathfinder Observations (CALIPSO) satellite, a joint US (NASA)/French (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales) mission, has provided high-resolution aerosol and cloud profiles of the Earth’s atmosphere. The long-range transport in the tropics of several small-scale volcanic plumes has been monitored using these observations, which are unprecedented in their scope and detail. Their fate demonstrates the importance of even minor volcanic events on stratospheric-aerosol levels.
CALIPSO offers a unique opportunity to monitor aerosols and clouds in the atmosphere. The instrument is carried on a spacecraft circling the Earth in a polar orbit (see Figure 1), which provides coverage from 82°S to 82°N. The CALIPSO lidar (light detection and ranging) uses a laser that emits light at 532 and 1064nm. The laser light is scattered by molecules and particles in the atmosphere, and a portion is scattered back (backscattered) towards the spacecraft. The backscatter signal is collected by a telescope and sampled at a rate of 10MHz. The 3D location and density of clouds and aerosol layers can be inferred from the vertical backscatter profiles from the ground to the stratosphere.3 Primarily designed for studying tropospheric particles, the nighttime channel at 532nm has a high sensitivity and can, with sufficient averaging, be used to detect small-scale volcanic plumes in the stratosphere for several months, even if the aerosol density is very low.
Since June 2006, CALIPSO observed several volcanic plumes and followed them as they were carried around the world by atmospheric circulation. Figure 2 shows the evolution of the mean scattering-ratio (SR) profile between 20°N and 20°S from June 2006 to May 2010 with a temporal and vertical resolution of 16 days (CALIPSO measurement cycle) and 200m, respectively. The SR is the ratio between the total (aerosol and molecular) and molecular-only backscatter. The maxima, seen in 2006 with an SR greater than 1.2, represent two volcanic plumes, injected at 20 and 17km, respectively, by the Soufriere Hills in the Caribbean on 20 May and the Tavurvur cone of the Rabaul volcano in Papua New Guinea on 7 October. The plume from Soufriere Hills remains at the same level for three months before being slowly lifted in the stratosphere by the general circulation, while the Tavurvur aerosols, at lower levels, disappear within two to three months.
Smaller plumes, with SRs between 1.08 and 1.14, were observed at 17–19km in November–December 2008 and July–December 2009, respectively. These two plumes are further transported into the tropics after the Kasatochi (Alaska) and Sarychev (Kamchatka, Russia) eruptions on 7 August 2008 and 12 June 2009, respectively. The signal seen at 21–22km in March 2009 with an SR of 1.10–1.12 is the signature of soot particles from an extreme biomass-burning episode near Melbourne (Australia) on 7 February 2009 (‘Black Saturday’).
For the first time, those moderate events have been detected over a long period, demonstrating that eruptions with a volcanic explosivity index between three and four and located in the tropics can be an important source of aerosols for the stratosphere, a fact not fully recognized until now. The sulfuric dioxide initially injected at 19–20km is oxidized into sulfuric acid droplets and transported by the general circulation—also called Brewer-Dobson (BD) circulation—into the middle tropical stratosphere, forming a reservoir. Afterwards, those aerosols are released into the global stratosphere according to the season and the phase of the quasibiennal oscillation.5 The vertical velocity of the ascending branch of the BD circulation can be deduced by subtracting the sedimentation from the apparent volcanic-plume uplift, providing an opportunity to evaluate the mean vertical atmospheric motion in the stratosphere.
more at Spie.org here
JP Vernier has done a nice slide show explaining it all, just prior to the publication of the new paper, and you can view it here:
http://www.kiss.caltech.edu/workshops/geoengineering2011/presentations/vernier.pdf
I found this graph most interesting:
They say that small trend starting in 2002 is “No large eruptions over the last decade : but small and frequent ones”.
Update – Caveat: As Jos points out in comments, this Vernier study is about the stratosphere (15-30) where Kaufmann et al is the troposphere (0-15km) , an important distinction that I missed. That’s what I get for posting late at night while tired. However, the premise that Vernier contradicts, the issue of stratospheric aersol increase due to China coal use appears to be falsified. Perhaps though, the authors will turn to the troposphere next as this recent study suggests that the volcanic impact on climate may be significantly underestimated. The secondary nucleation process they cite may work to increase tropospheric aerosols, and also, it stands to reason the smaller eruptions, as cited by Vernier, would also inject into the troposphere as well.
Sarychev is in the Kurils, hardly tropical.(48N) Other recent eruptions were Icelandic. Locon in Indonesia is currently erupting but only to a height of 3500m.
Volcanoes do inject aerosols into the upper atmosphere but every day at least one volcano is erupting somewhere on the planet. Can’t NASA look at solar activity?
Anthony:
Thankyou for posting this. It is interesting. But my BS detector jumped when I read this sentence in the paper:
“The long-range transport in the tropics of several small-scale volcanic plumes has been monitored using these observations, which are unprecedented in their scope and detail.”
The sentence is misleading in that it implies the observed effect is unprecedented. But that is not the case. It is the observation which is known to be “unprecedented” because it was obtained using the CALIPSO satelite which has only provided its observations “Since June 2006”.
Indeed, they more accurately say;
“For the first time, those moderate events have been detected over a long period, demonstrating that eruptions with a volcanic explosivity index between three and four and located in the tropics can be an important source of aerosols for the stratosphere, a fact not fully recognized until now.”
Is the recent hiatus in rising global temperature induced by natural arosol variations, and was the similar hiatus from ~1940 to ~1970 also induced by them? Perhaps and perhaps, but much more data is needed before either deduction can be made.
Any suggestion that the CALIPSO data provides answers to these questions is an error (or is spin).
Richard
Or it could be something else.
The AGW[]ers are desperate to find reasons to excuse the lack of warming which until recently they insisted had occurred. Makes me sick. Makes me sick to my stomach that I am now paying extra taxes to alleviate a warming that has not yet occurred and may not be harmful and even then by an unspecified and minuscule amount. What is wrong with these people? Why do they want to stop our energy usage, which will result in hardship and in many cases deaths, when they KNOW, I mean, THEY KNOW, that it will have no impact on the temperature even if we turn off all carbon Dioxide output for 10 years? What is wrong with these idiots? What is it that they don’t get? That they do not see?
I don’t suppose it ever even enters someone’s head that their hypothesis about CO2 might be wrong… they’re so certain that CO2 was causing the warming that… well… it just HAS to be something else masking it.
Absolute idealogues.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/idealogues
Small typo on the Kaufmann paper’s link, it says 2100
REPLY: Typo fixed, thanks
Could Volcanoes be another method the earth haas of self regulating – as the pressure of the atmosphere builds the pressure on the plates increases and volcanoes release cooling particulates relieving the pressure?
In any case, given that aerosols are reflecting some energy back into space, this information lends credence to the hypothesis that the world is undergoing a rapid warming phase and is being diminished by other factors (such as aerosols). I’m re-evaluating the whole system at the moment because the idea that there are better explanations for the warming trend are wearing thin. And, the explanations as to the stagnation of the warming trends are reasonable.
With the articles of late detailing one “cause” or “another”, to me what it boils down to, really, is we simply just do NOT know what and why cycles in climate change. Stick a wet finger in the air and take a WAG!
At the same time there are attempts to explain the non-warming, others say global warming caused the recent extreme weather. It is important for the activists to be flexible.
The alarmists will blame anything to try to explain away the 10-15 year temperature statis, except, of course, solar activity.
When my pot takes a longer than normal time to bring to boil, I check the gas burner underneat the pot, not the CO2 level in the kitchen, or the aerosols at ceiling level. Ok, not a perfect analogy, but NASA should start looking at the sun, which anyway supplies 99% of all energy on the surface of this planet. They should take a hard look at solar activity, as CERN’s Jasper Kirkby has been doing for the last few years. But I think they are actually afraid to look at the sun, just as the Pope was afraid when Galileo asked him to take a pepp through his telescope. The Pope was afraid of having to accept what Galileo was claiming. So, the best way is not to look at all and keep on living in a dreamworld, and getting paid good money for it.
katla is going to erupt at any moment that will sort out the men from the boys.
The “settled science” is getting more and more unsettled ………. almost on a daily basis.
Drew:
Thankyou for the laugh you provide at July 18, 2011 at 3:32 am.
But you forgot to ad the “sarc/” comment at the end of your superb piece of satire. My mention of this oversight may seem to be a quibble, but we all need to remember there are gullible people who could read comments such as yours and think they are serious.
Richard
Until the past couple of years, there has been no reports of volcanoes that had an explosivity index high enough to propel debris up into the stratosphere since 1991. Now suddenly the lesser volcanoes can affect climate?
I am with commenter John Marshall. This seems like a dodgy explanation. Small to medium sized eruptions occur nearly constantly, but they were thought to not affect global climate. And if they did, their effect would be constant too.
John M Reynolds
One of the problems with the volcano theory is that during the first part of the 20th century (certainly up to 1940) there was more volcano activity than today. This is recognised by the IPCC. If volcanos truly depress (mask) warming, then they would be counter-acting the 1900 to 1940 warming which would mean that the natural net forcing that caused that warming (this is prior to large scale manmade CO2 emissions) must be far more substantial than presently recognised/accepted. If natural variability is far more substantial than presently accepted, it follows that rather than explaing about 50% of the observed warming, it may indeed (and probably does) account for more than 50% of the observed warming. [Since I doubt that co2 accounts for much, it is probable that natural variation, particularly differences in cloud cover, account for nearly all the warming that has taken place this past century and a half].
Why do they not simply tell the truth, namely, that they do not know what is going on and cannot explain the warming of the last century nor the hiatus in that warming during the current century.
There have been many major volcanic eruptions during the recent, now stalled, warming period that prove the conclusions of this study are false.
The industrialisation of China and India also occurred during the recent, now stalled, warming period.
This is yet another display of desperation that no one is going to fall for.
15 years of no warming, AGW is falsified.
This seems reasonable, Dansgaard reconstructs past secular changes also associated with volcanism from ice-core data (W. Dansgaard, 1980. “Greenland ice sheet evidence of post-glacial vulcanism and its climate impact” Nature. Volume 288). The paper is well known. Of course, this is only one factor. The LA Times obituary of course misconstrues his career as a CO2 pioneer, but not even the dead are sacred to some (I doubt the LAT writer reads).
Oh, and Kaufman et al. 2100!? You might want to check that.
This is a perfect example of how climatology should be done. It follows the scientific method! In this study, the authors: 1. Asked a question, 2. Did background research, 3. Proposed hypotheses, (Coal or Volcanoes?), 4. Collected data to test the hypotheses, 5. Analyzed the results, 6. Drew conclusions, & 7. Presented the results (and data). – Perfect! Let’s hope all aspiring climatologists learn from this.
Darren (July 18, 2011 at 3:25 am):
Could Volcanoes be another method the earth has of self regulating – as the pressure of the atmosphere builds, the pressure on the plates increases and volcanoes release cooling particulates relieving the pressure?
Probably not. Pressure on the Earth’s crust from the addition of large amounts of water, ice, and/or rock (mountains) depresses localized areas over time (like slowly pushing your finger on the surface of a water balloon). Removing the overlying weight allows it to rebound as the pressure is relieved. However, the pressure of the atmosphere is relatively uniform, and orders of magnitude less than those generated by the weight of oceans, glaciers and mountains.
Drew says:
July 18, 2011 at 3:32 am
In any case, given that aerosols are reflecting some energy back into space, this information lends credence to the hypothesis that the world is undergoing a rapid warming phase and is being diminished by other factors (such as aerosols). I’m re-evaluating the whole system at the moment because the idea that there are better explanations for the warming trend are wearing thin. And, the explanations as to the stagnation of the warming trends are reasonable.
I would be careful in that ‘re-evaluation’. In the models the effect of CO2 was taken as a given then aerosols and other ‘minor’ effects like clouds were added as parameterized fudge factors to make the hindcasts work. Using hindcast fudge factors as a way of forecasting the behavior of a chaotic system is a lot less than scientific – almost as bad as using a single tree’s growth rings as statistically representative of global climate.
Richard S. Courtney:
You are parsing the sentence you quoted incorrectly. “unprecedented” refers to the observations, not any observed effect.
Two men say they’re Jesus, one of them must be wrong
There’s a protest singer, he’s singing a protest song..
Mark Knopfler, Industrial Disease.
Its not an either-or situation.
The effect of the India/China sulfur addition to the atmosphere AND the volcanoe injections to the stratosphere will be cumulative and BOTH willbe having an effect.
It may be possible to measure the magnitude of each contribution by measuring the isotopic ratio as the volcanoe sulfur will have a higher heavey isotope ratio than the biologically sourced fossil fuel derived sulfur.
At least this acknowledges that VERY small amounts of a molecule can have significant effects on global temperature, the sulfur additions are a fraction pof the CO2 additions human activity is making.
It is known that sulfur in the atmosphere will cause cooling, so in the abscence of significant cooling over the recent decades despite the addition of sulfur from either or both sources there isd clearly still a factor driving a rising trend, briefly negated by the additional sulfur.
Unlike the CO2 however whether it comes from China or a volcanoe the sulfur will ‘rain out’ of the atmosphere within a few years and its temporary cooling effect will cease.
This sounds a bit like the ozone hole problem to me. They can now measure this phenomenon much more acurately so it has to be worse than we thought and it causes the cooling! How do we know that volcanic activity hasn’t been averaging out over the last few millennia… even epochs? Has anyone made an attempt to chart levels of volcanic activity over geologic time periods? Surely there is some sort of signature in the geology? (Obviously I am not a geologist :-).