In addition to the other observed factors such as a long sunspot cycle and minima and PDO flip, now we’ll add some aerosols to the mix. Volcanism has been quiet for the most part for a few years. This should have a cooling effect on the southern hemisphere.
I’ll point out that the effects on atmospheric albedo is yet unknown and depends on the strength of eruption, and quantity of ash and aerosols ejected into the stratosphere.
More than 1,500 people have fled their homes in southern Chile after the Chaiten volcano erupted, throwing a huge cloud of ash and lava into the sky.
The volcano, 800 miles south of the capital Santiago, had not erupted for more than 450 years and was considered dormant.
But it is now belching enormous clouds of thick ash that have drifted across a large area in both Chile and the Argentine province of Chubut, where an airport was forced to close.
Just six miles away, the town of Chaiten has a population of 7,000. Long used to the menacing form of the 3,000-foot mountain, it is now overshadowed by a towering column of ash.
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Using the reference provided by “Brian D”, take a look at this volcano using Google Earth.
volcanolive.com/chaiten.html
Chaitén Volcano
Chile
42.833S, 72.646W
Summit elevation 962 m
Caldera
As reported in the above link the caldera is 3.5 kilometers in diameter and the central lava dome (pre-eruption) is 2 kilometers in diameter as measured in Google Earth. Google Earth gives the elevation of the lava dome as 925 meters which is 300 meters above the floor of the caldera. If this were a half sphere ((4/3*PI*R**3)/2) with a radius of 1 kilometer we are looking at a little over 2 cubic kilometers of lava rock minimum.
In comparison the current post eruption caldera of Mt. St. Helens (46.20N, 122.18W) is less than 2 kilometers in diameter. The current lava dome is approximately 0.5 kilometers in diameter.
Now let’s look at Mt, Pinatubo (15.13N, 120.35E) in the Philippines. The current post eruption caldera is 2 kilometers in diameter and is occupied by a crater lake.
Given the size of its caldera and lava dome I would not underestimate Mt. Chaitén. Also it has a larger (in elevation) neighbor, Mt. Minchinmávida (42.78 S, 72.43 W) which was active as recently as 1834 as reported by Charles Darwin.
The real problem is that even if Mt. Chaitén has zero impact on climate and there is a global cooling event, the official party line will be: “The volcano ate our global warming”.
Mike
Can someone please calculate the carbon footprint…..
Stephen L: Refer to page 15 (205) of “Volcanic Eruptions and Climate.”
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/ROG2000.pdf
In it, Alan Robock explains the impact explosive volcanoes have on the stratosphere: “After the 1982 El Chichon and 1991 Pinatubo eruptions the tropical bands (30S–30N) warmed more than the 30N–90N band…producing an enhanced pole-to-equator temperature gradient. The resulting stronger polar vortex produces the tropospheric winter warming…”
[…] Anthony has posted nice photos. […]
One other thing, the town of Chaitén is 10 kilometers south of the volcano and along a river which is feed directly from the volcanic uplands to the north. I don’t know what the current snow conditions are on the mountain but I hope someone is planning for the possibility of a lahar. The river valley looks like a classic lahar flood plane.
Mike
Arch, I don’t accept that manmade CO2 will have much of an impact at all. It does not seem to have, at least so far. Prove your hypothesis.
“Whatever the magnitude of the impact, its duration will only be a couple years at the most. A mere blip compared to the centuries of impact anthropogenic fossil fuel derived CO2 will have.”
Your bangs hide the lobotomy scars well….
Wonder what this eruption’s impact will be in addition to similar, but not quite so large, volcanic events in Indonesia, Peru and Colombia in the past two to three weeks?
Interestingly enough, I was reading about the Laki volcano, whose 8 month long eruption in 1783-84 resulted in a cooling effect for much of the northern hemisphere. Read it for yourselves; http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/Gases/laki.html
Not comparable I know in terms of magnitude or particulate matter expulsion, but still intriguing.
A mere blip compared to the centuries of impact anthropogenic fossil fuel derived CO2 will have.
*snort* You’re not actually saying that CO2 from volcanoes is different from that emitted by burning fossil fuels, are you? CO2 is CO2, no matter where it comes from, and what humans are responsible for is a tiny fraction of what the earth and all of nature emits.
“A mere blip compared to the centuries of impact anthropogenic fossil fuel derived CO2 will have.”
I don’t think anyone has shown that CO2 from fossil has had any measurable impact whatsoever. I would say that land use changes have had more of an impact on land temperatures than fossil fuel burning does. The key would be for someone to look at times in the past when atmospheric CO2 content was 10 times higher than today and we were in an ice age.
In fact, I would also propose that fossil fuel burning might actually be saving us from starvation. Earth’s CO2 level was reaching the point where plant life was going to have a hard time surviving.
Ahhhh, I’ve got it. CO2 spewing out of a volcano is “natural”, so it is good AND short lived versus bad ol’ industrial CO2 which will cause loss of ice and extinction of polar bears for hundreds of years.
I hate cold and polar bears.
(Popping open a Diet Coke to hasten polar bear extinction and ice melt. Take THAT.)
This eruption looks pretty wimpy so far. It does look like it’s cleared out the plumbing without a big explosion, so it may not have enough energy to get SO2 into the stratosphere. Anything that stays in the troposphere rains out quickly.
I don’t know if these Western Americas volcanoes release all that much SO2 or CO2. The Indonesian volcanoes do a lot better in that regard. St. Helens blew off 1 cubic mile of magma and mountain. It and El Chichon (don’t know the size offhand) had little climate impact. Pinatubo (size ?), Krakatoa (5 cu. mi.) and Tambora (25 cu. mi.) are all Indonesian volcanoes.
Tambora may have been the largest eruption in 10,000 years. It occurred about 2/3s of the way into the Dalton Minimum and brought the Year without a Summer. From weather logs I think the storm track was forced south out of Canada, and that brought the most severe effects to New England and Europe. See my http://wermenh.com/1816.html for a New Hampshire point of view. I added a note there just last week about the Dalton Minimum.
Aaron C (09:05:18) :
“Don’t most volcanoes give days, weeks, or even months of warning signs before a major eruption? This is the first I’ve heard of this one. Did I miss something?”
My guess is that people don’t bother to instrument volcanoes that have been dormant for 9,000 years. Volcanoes don’t have the decency to follow scripts, but common precursors are swelling (sometimes visible as cracks in the ground of snow cap, but better recorded by GPS or tiltmeters), minor earthquakes, and “harmonic tremors” that occur as magma moves upward in the volcano.
BTW, I know less about volcanology than I do about climatology, so take all the above with a healthy share of skepticism. I know, I know, that’s just standard operating procedure. Will a real geologist please speak up?
-Ric
Anthony – Love the site, very educational.
OT, but I was just looking at the SOHO images and is it just me or does it look like there’s a sunspot developing in the lower left quadrant? If so, would this still be a cycle 23 spot given its low latitude?
I wonder how this volcanic eruption from 1991 in S. Chile affected the S. Hemi. Might be hard to tell because of Pinatubo the same year.
Chile
45.90 S, 72.97 W
summit elevation 1905 m
stratovolcano
Note: There is another volcano with the same name in Antarctica.
Cerro Hudson volcano is located in southern Chile. The volcano contains an ice-filled, 10-km-wide caldera.
In 1991 Hudson volcano produced a large eruption of volcanic explosive index 5.
It was one of the largest eruptions of the 20th century. An ash column to 18 km and ashfall on the Falkland Islands 1000 km away were reported from Hudson.
Found some more info on the Hudson eruption 1991.
In one of the largest eruptions of the century, Hudson erupted again between August 12-15th, producing a column 18 km high. Ashfall was observed on the Falkland islands (~1,000 km SE; Figure 5), and covered a total area of ~80 000 km2 (Figure 3 and 5). DRE (dense rock equivalent) tephra volume estimates range between 2 and 6 km3: >1 km3 was deposited in Chile, around 2 km3 in Argentina, and 2 km3 may have fallen in the Atlantic Ocean or been lost to the atmosphere. Satellite data showed that the eruption produced a large SO2-rich cloud, estimated to contain 1.5 megatons of SO2 on 16 August, which was transported twice around the globe in 2 weeks [BGVN 16:08].
http://www.geo.mtu.edu/~ajdurant/hudson.htm
The warmanists will use this eruption as an excuse for all future cooling events now…. AGW theory is alive and well they will try to asure us!!!
…. Sorta which then begs the question… If after decades of increasing CO2, the Anthropogenic effects of that are not OBSERVABLE in any CLEAR sense. Yet a volcano pops off…. bingo immediate effect measurable and clear.
Probably proves the point that it is all about Albedo…. very little to do with CO2….
Looks like that to my unlearned unscientific eye anyway.
Volcanos erupt almost daily somewhere in the world. Volcano watchers will regard this eruption as just another however it is interesting to note that Chaiten has been considered to be Extremely dormant – almost classified as extinct. It will be a little while until the end of the eruption process and the investigating volcanologists will issue a VE number based on the amount of ejected material.
It takes an eruption of VE 5+ to cause significant alteration of the climate. The largest recorded eruption in the 20th Century was Pinatubo. The Calculations of cooling were between 0.5c and 1.1c for about a year and half post eruption.
Tambora Indonesia (1815) was a VE 6.0+ and indeed made a significant impact to world climate for around three years. An estimated 36,000 people were killed in the initial eruption/tsunami and a further 80 – 100,000 in the ensuring famine caused by the cooling effect. (Year without summer etc,etc)
Krakatau although dramatic had a much less effect on the world climate than Tambora.
VE 6 eruptions are estimated to take place on an average of every 1000 years.
There is some evidence that Krakatu erupted with an intensity of VE6+ during the initial stages of the medieval cool period (circa 1350.s) Unfortunately because of the way it explosively erupts much evidence has been literally blown away.
It doesn’t matter whereabouts on the planet a VE6+ eruption occurs. The ash stream raises so high it envelopes the planet.
Some volcanos have been in continuous eruption for hundreds of years.
In just one eruption Pinatubo put more ozone damaging gases into the atmosphere then 10 years of total man made stuff.
One anecdote for you. I lived in Indonesia for twelve years. The air is so contaminated by volcanic fumes in Indonesia it is not possible to distill rainwater enough to use for some industrial purposes. We needed to import distilled water from Scandinavia for our pourposes.
More light reading on Volcanos here [url]http://www.intlvrc.org/cerupt.htm[/url]
@TinyCO2
I seriously doubt there’s a significant relation between tectonics and solar activity. Thanks for the hazards site! It’s very interesting.
@McGrats, Ronanyne
They (at least Hansen) are still insisting it’s still warming dramatically.
But my feeling is that they’ve begun searching for back doors. Still, you could barely get a cat through this backdoor that this volcano presents. They won’t try to bolt through it. And even if they did, what would that say about their CO2 theory? It would say that even a routine volcano can overwehlm their “powerful” manmade CO2 GHG effect. Don’t try it Hansen!
Slicer-Dicer,
Concerning data on magnitude – I agree we’ll have to wait. Volcanoes need to be BIG (VEI > 3 or 4) to really have an impact.
Okay, I’ll be patient.
Looking at Drudge, it looks like a big puff.
Don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m ready to move on to the next topic. 😉
Volcanos erupt somewhere on the planet virtually every day. Most are small size. Some volcanos have been erupting continuously for hundreds of years.
Volcanic eruptions are measured by an index which approximates the amount of ejecta. Most world wide eruptions are around the VE 1 or 2 mark
The second largest recorded eruption of the 20th century was Pinatubo. VE5+ It caused world wide cooling of between 0.5 and 1.1 degrees for approx one and half years.
The largest eruption in the 19th century was Tambora in Indonesia.VE6+ This eruption was 100 times the eruption of Pinatubo. Tambora caused approx 36,000 deaths from the direct eruption plus tsunamis and approx 80 – 100,000 deaths from the ensuring famine caused by the dramatic cooling caused by its aerosols which dispersed worldwide. (years of darkness or years without summer)
The eruption index of Chaiten will not be known until studied and evalueated by Volcanologists.
VE indexs larger than 5+ can have world wide influence. VE 6+ would be catestrophic. VE7+ is Mega Volcano – the last being Toba on Sumatera 72,000 years ago. (VE7 would be major extinction)
VE 6’s have an approximate frequency of 1000 years. However there is conjecture that Krakatoa may have had a VE6+ in the period of around 1350 and possibly another around 4 -500AD. Unfortunatetly with Krakatau most of the evidence gets literally blown away.
Willem de :ange: Never heard it said before that Pinatubo was the only volcano in 1991 to have an effect that year, but it is the most talked about. Same thing with the early 80s. Most people only mention El Chichon, though there were at least three that year that registered on the DVI.
Brian D: If you download the linked hemispheric SATO INDEX and zoom in on 1991, you can see the separate impacts on the Southern Hemisphere of the two explosive volcanoes that year. Oops, the NH is the Blue curve and SH is Red.
http://i25.tinypic.com/w012kx.jpg
Also note that VEI has a poor correlation to temperature. Mt St. Helens had a high VEI but little temperature effect. (Unless you lived next door.) Research the Lamb Dust Veil Index (DVI) for a better reference on temperature effects than VEI. I’m still looking at the SATO Index as a good one too. Unfortunately, I haven’t found an updated version. The version I have ended in 2000.
Regards
If volcanic eruptions of sufficient size tend to cool the Earth for short periods of time due to aerosols, isn’t that saying that less sun produced energy hits the Earth? If so, then isn’t that similar to solar variance? So if the Goremaniacs insist that solar variance has no effect on temperature, how can the aerosols from a volcano?
It is well known that some volcanoes can induce short term climate change, the one that we all know about in recent years is the 1991 Pinatubo eruption.
Does that mean any man made emmissions are inignificant and therefore cannot be effecting the climate in any appreciable way?
Well not according to this guy:
“”Man-made, or “anthropogenic” emissions can make the consequences of volcanic eruptions on the global climate system more severe. For instance, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the atmosphere start a chain of chemical reactions on aerosol surfaces that destroy ozone molecules in the mid-latitude stratosphere, intensifying observed stratospheric ozone depletion.
“While we have no observations, the 1963 Agung eruption on the island of Bali probably did not deplete ozone as there was little atmospheric chlorine in the stratosphere. In 1991 after the Pinatubo eruption, when the amount of CFCs in the stratosphere increased, the ozone content in the mid-latitudes decreased by 5 percent to 8 percent, affecting highly populated regions,”-
DR. Stenchikov. Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/Volcano/
Bob Tisdale: Thanks for the link to Robock’s article on volcanoes and climate. I just accessed a recent article by him in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists pointing out 20 reasons why geoengineering the climate may not be a good idea. Some of us think the USAF and/or other agencies are already doing it. Here’s the
link to the article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists:
http://www.thebulletin.org/files/064002006_0.pdf
CO2 from volcanoes is negligible compared to man-made (1991 Pinatubo was 42Mt, man-made 7100Mt / year). Other natural sources are much bigger however (150,000Mt / year).
SO2 has to reach high in the stratosphere to have a climate effect. Pinatubo reached 30 miles. The current eruption has reached 20km.