More ash and aerosols headed for the stratosphere. Click to watch the Video from TVN:
(h/t to Jet Stream)
Here is the satellite image view of the first eruption:
Click for a much larger image from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
More imagery, thanks to Gary Galrud, recently from NOAA showing ash extent:
Click for a full sized image
You welcome Anthony, love the site…. was just reading up on Cycle 24:) Low & Slow
100,000 is certainly high enough to get stuff up in the atmosphere for a few years. That’s Pinitubo-level right there.
This is shaping up to be a perfect storm: Weak solar, PDO/AMO shift, and now vocanic cooling. 2010, we’re back to 1960s temps….
The Google image shows a low elevation, wide caldera that doesn’t have the typical shape of a stratovolcano. The surrounding ridges and valleys do not look volcanic, but without a geology map its hard to tell. I wonder if this is a newer volcanic center.
BTW, I find it hard to believe that the caldera is as old as 9,000 years, especially this far south (note glaciers surrounding the other volcanic peak to the east).
Anthony Isgar (11:31:41) :
“The problem is not how much effect this volcano will have, the problem is that the AGW zealots will claim that any cooling can be attributed to it and other eruptions that have been occurring the past year.”
They will have a hard time convincing the masses if another winter like the past one occurs in China and North America. Masses feel heat, they believe the warmers, they feel cold, they believe the coolers. Therefore there will be a respite before the catastrophic energy curtailing measures are planned, and if the sun cycle goes as predicted, this might be enough to scrap the whole CO2 scare.
My prediction at Climate Audit (from 3 months ago) of a -0.2C global temperature anomaly for 2008 after a VEI4+ eruption before June is starting to look pretty good.
Not that it means anything, except perhaps that predicting climate, so influenced by factors we can’t predict like volcanos, is a fools game.
I agree with Anna, the global warming fanatics are already finding it hard to hold the line in public opinion. In an article in the Sunday Telegraph (UK) this site was widely quoted and the comments from the UK public were very hostile to the global warming theories. A cool summer and hard winter will really be hard to explain away. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/05/04/do0405.xml
In response to SlicerDicer, this article says only a few thousand tons of sulfur dioxide has been emitted from the volcano: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080507/D90GHEFO0.html
On Google Earth you can clearly see a caldera 2km across and about 80% filled by a lava dome.
A 2km across caldera is fairly small and indicates the last eruption wasn’t that large, a bit larger than the Mount St Helens Eruption.
Early days yet bogdon6, I notice a lot of comments about climate effect are coming out of the agencies far away from the action. The news reports are some time behind. This eruption phase could go on for some time.
anna v
I would really really like to hope you are correct. The only problem is there has been no extra heat since 1998, there was cooling from 1955-1977, and the great global warming scare has continued unabated. I would really like to believe the masses will rebel against energy curtailing, but have the sinking suspicion they will ignorantly believe what is reported on the major media outlets.
I forget who did the study, but they found that on average there is nearly 20 pro-AGW stories reported around the world for every anti-AGW story.
I have come up with a new name for the AGW zealots. From now on I will refer to them as Big Weather, since any skeptics are automatically referred to as Big Oil. It is amusing to see that Al Gore made 50 million just from the box office income from his movie. This does not take into account the 100k he charges per speech, and the money he has gotten from his books and tv shows. I wish Big Oil would pay me that much to be a skeptic.
It’s been suggested that a large eruption might cool the planet. While, this may be true over the course of a year or two, there has been research suggesting that such eruptions could increase the likelihood of an el nino taking place http://www.nature.com/nature/links/031120/031120-7.html. Indeed, the recent eruptions of El Chichon (1983) and Pinatubo (1991) were both followed by el nino events and did not lead to longer-term cooling. This would also be consistent with Le Chatelier’s principle, where a change in a stable system prompts an opposing response, returning the system back to equilibrium.
bogdon6
Thanks for the informative link.
“But the possibility of the Chaiten volcano affecting Earth’s climate is probably fairly low, experts said.”
This V is not big. Predictions of temperatures sinking 0.2°C and other disaster scenarios already being floated here are premature I think. Everyone can make predictions and hope to get it right. After all, every broken clock is correct twice a day.
anna
Personally I doubt the AGW alarmists will be using this eruption to cover their CO2 blunder – it’s too late for that. The oceans and atmosphere have started cooling years ago. And there’s plenty of data showing Vs of this scale having little impact on climate. A volcano of this scale cannot cause cooling beyond a year or two.
On VEI
A VEI of 4 means scant impact of the climate. A VEI of 5 means “measurable”. Unless you have a 6, don’t expect climate changes you’ll notice, unless you have good instruments.
Okay, maybe a volcano VEI 5+ could be the “tipping” mechanism in conjunction with changing PDO, AMO, solar activity blah blah blah. But we’ve learned, at least on the warming side, that tipping mechanisms really don’t pan out.
If its a dome collapse, the collapse could lead to an explosive event like Mazama where successive collapses opened up more of the lava pool leading to more eruptions leading to more collapses.
“The collapse and the erosive ring eruptions fed each other – the sinking volcano pushed magma upward and the erupting material both lubricated the downward subsidence and eroded the sides, making it easier for much of Mazama to sink into the earth.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Mazama
Anthony -I’d echo a comment up thread that the volcanic explosivity index needs to be 5 or over to make an impact on climate – any ideas what this one is?
I’d note from a picture on your earlier thread that the ash and aerosol seemed to be spreading out at the base of the tropopause and wonder if this is significant for the non-spreading of SO2 aerosol around the globe – though I’m no expert here.
Back home later today and will send some notes and charts on past volcanos. I see you had Peter Stotts climate model up here the other day from which you will see that he models significant cooling following Krakatau. But if you look at the temperature record you’ll see that there wasn’t actually any cooling. In fact if you look at all major erruptions since Krakatau you’ll struggle to see any link between them and the temperature record. It’s amazing isn’t it?
This observation, I believe, has profound implications for the whole AGW hypothesis.
Lucia, yes, his work on the diffusion of particles in turbulence gave rise to the ‘Richardson number’ but he was more of a meteorologist rather than an oceanographer – well, actually, he was all sorts of things, in fact anything that aroused his curiosity and to which he could apply his mathematics. Please do read the affectionate panegyric by a family friend, Prof. J.C.R. Hunt, and discover a remarkable man who would have been right at home here on this site:
http://www.cpom.org/people/jcrh/AnnRevFluMech(30)LFR.pdf
Gary Gulrud, in the other thread you asserted that shortly after 1812 global atmosheric CO2 concerntration were as high as 450ppm, do you have a source? Current belief is that CO2 has about a 100 year life in the atmosphere, both of these can’t be true.
Meanwhile, Al Gore’s at it again…
We have found our next global crisis, and its name is Al Gore.
They will have a hard time convincing the masses
Anna is wise. This is a “feel the heat” kind of deal.
Mobs (as it were) have certain other things in common, too. They tend to be iconoclastic. An “enemy”, in this case, the “deniers” and “corporate shills” fill that role.
The enemy is broken down into two categories: stupid (deniers of reality) and corrupt (corporate shills). This results in feelings of intellectual and moral superiority (it is actually conformist envy). As Heinlein once put it, “Hell hath no fury like a pacifist.”
However, that sort of crowd (other than the leadership) also are notoriously fickle. All one has to do is direct their attention towards a different icon . . . a couple more bad winters, and anything is possible.
Patrick, outstanding post there. Thanks!
ok…I *might* jump on the bandwagon now. But, as in all things I’m going to be a skeptic until I see some numbers.
One can see that Chaiten continues to erupt explosively by looking at the time-motion visible satellite pictures at ADDS. A plume appears in this morning’s pictures.
http://aviationweather.gov/obs/sat/intl/
Here is an interesting blog on Chaiten:
http://www.seablogger.com/?p=10684
aaron: A source is Beck’s paper, available at Icecap, a graphic:
http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/graphs.htm#co2t
The graphic shows the 450ppm, not the two eruptions which aren’t his concern. A support of this paper is somewhere at NZClimateScience by physical chemist Dr. Kaufmann (sp?).
My source for the 1812 unidentified eruption isn’t immediately coming to mind, probably Reid Bryson, on the volcanic, record also at Icecap. This maybe an SO2 graph, I don’t remember.
The connection between the eruptions and the 450ppm peak are my own.
Now about the CO2 requiring a century to scrub? Mythology is public domain, I require no citation.
Does this mean that Chile will have to reduce there CO2 emissions this year?
Seriously though, does anyone have a number as to how much CO2 this is releasing each day? How does it compair to say Canada’s anual CO2 emissions?
If this results in the smallest bit of cooling, will NASA have to ‘adjust’ the temperature records up again ?
With St. Helens as an example, they’ll at least get some pretty sunsets for a while.
Philip_B said: “Interesting article on S American volcano in 1600 causing a big freeze from Europe to Japan.”
Although the article appeared on the FNC, it was written by Andrea Thompson for “Live Science,” a publication that’s so often hystericle over GW, that you might take anything they say with a grain of salt.
Jack Koenig, Editor
The Mysterious Climate Project
http://www.climateclinic.com