Thick ash poured from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull Volcano when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired this image on April 17, 2010. The ash in this image is at two different altitudes. A concentrated plume rises over a more diffuse cloud of ash, casting a dark shadow on the ash below. The volcano had been emitting ash in puffs that reached between 16,000 and 24,000 feet, according to the Icelandic Met Office. The higher plume seen here is likely from a more explosive event.
Now some new research on this eruption leads to a conclusion that volcano aerosols may be underestimated. Apparently they find that there’s a secondary nucleation particle mechanism. They say:
…we report the first observation of nucleation and new secondary particle formation events in a volcanic plume.
Essentially, they analyzed how many secondary particles this ash generated as it reacted with the atmospheric chemistry of the atmosphere. They found that particles created from the eruptions were mostly composed of sulfuric acid, but as a consequence of the atmospheric reactions, especially at lower than previously considered altitudes, they grew over time, multiplying the effect. This new paper was in the PNAS early edition this week.
Abstract:
Observations of nucleation of new particles in a volcanic plume
+ Author Affiliations
aLaboratoire de Météorologie Physique, Observatoire de Physique du Globe de Clermont Ferrand, Centre National de la Recheche Scientifique, Unité Mixte de Recherche 6016, Université Blaise Pascal, 63177 Aubière, France; and
bLaboratoire de Glaciologie et Géophysique de l’Environnement, Observatoire des Sciences de l’Univers de Grenoble, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Unité Mixte de Recherche 5183, Université Joseph Frourier, BP 53-38041 Grenoble Cedex 9, France
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Edited by Mark H. Thiemens, University of California, La Jolla, CA, and approved June 21, 2011 (received for review March 29, 2011)
Abstract
Volcanic eruptions caused major weather and climatic changes on timescales ranging from hours to centuries in the past. Volcanic particles are injected in the atmosphere both as primary particles rapidly deposited due to their large sizes on time scales of minutes to a few weeks in the troposphere, and secondary particles mainly derived from the oxidation of sulfur dioxide. These particles are responsible for the atmospheric cooling observed at both regional and global scales following large volcanic eruptions. However, large condensational sinks due to preexisting particles within the plume, and unknown nucleation mechanisms under these circumstances make the assumption of new secondary particle formation still uncertain because the phenomenon has never been observed in a volcanic plume. In this work, we report the first observation of nucleation and new secondary particle formation events in a volcanic plume. These measurements were performed at the puy de Dôme atmospheric research station in central France during the Eyjafjallajokull volcano eruption in Spring 2010. We show that the nucleation is indeed linked to exceptionally high concentrations of sulfuric acid and present an unusual high particle formation rate. In addition we demonstrate that the binary H2SO4 – H2O nucleation scheme, as it is usually considered in modeling studies, underestimates by 7 to 8 orders of magnitude the observed particle formation rate and, therefore, should not be applied in tropospheric conditions. These results may help to revisit all past simulations of the impact of volcanic eruptions on climate.
h/t to reader “Scarlet Pumpernickel”.
Wow! You mean the lying liars who lie about humans destroying the environment are going to admit that volcanic eruptions put more “greenhouse gas” into the atmosphere than the entirety of the amount put into the atmosphere by the human race throughout its existence?
I will believe it when it happens, loudly and across the entire world’s media outlets, and not before.
“Maybe as others have suggested we should tax the offending country that owns the volcano. ”
No no no… you have to send money to the coutnry owning the volcano for undoing some of the damage the rest of us caused. obviously.
The HadSST folks sure aren’t going to be happy about this. As we just learned from RealClimate:
“One odd feature of the HadSST2 collation was that the temperature impact of the 1883 Krakatoa eruption – which is very clear in the land measurements – didn’t really show up in the SST. Thus comparisons to model simulations (which generally estimate an impact comparable to that of Pinatubo in 1991) showed a pretty big mismatch (see Hansen et al (2007)). With the larger amount of data in this period in HadSST3, did the situation change?
It seems clear that the new data (including HadSST3) will be closer to the models than previously, if not quite perfectly in line (but given the uncertainties in the magnitude of the Krakatoa forcing, a perfect match is unlikely). ”
They just managed to get the observational data to match the models, and now the models are going to change?!? A climatologist’s work is never done.
Hey, what’s 7 to 8 orders of magnitude between friends?
Not only that, but Katla is next. Yup. We’re doomed.
What surprises me is that they had underestimated “by 7 to 8 orders of magnitude the observed particle formation rate”. That is, they there are 10 – 100 million times more particles formed? Seems a bit on the high side to me.
Does this also apply to the recent study that China’s aerosols are responsible for recent lack of warming? If so, then “underestimates by 7 to 8 orders of magnitude” means that the calculations for China are also wildly off, and the conclusions of that study also have nothing to support them.
Everyone go back and start over.
7-8 *orders of magnitude*? In more normal english, 10,000,000-100,000,000 times? My goodness. “Juuuuust a little outside”.
Unless the solar cycle decides to uptick, I don’t see the volcanoes retreating. We already seem near 1930’s levels. Silly rabbits like Gates and Mosher don’t seem to realize that we can go from one extreme to the other very rapidly when the volcanoes are blowing.
mt says:
July 12, 2011 at 4:59 am
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I have for many years been referring to the Krakatoa discrepancy/anomaly. All one can conclude is the processes and effects of volcanos is not well understood.
It does kinda distress me that the warmists and alarmists and the pro-agw scientists have largely dismissed volcanic activity as minor in terms of potential climate change effects, either from CO2 or from SO2 or dust output, cloud /droplet nucleation, etc, etc. The fact remains that these events do have an effect on climate at local or global scale depending on the scale of the eruption. Just because we do not know the mechanisms precisely or the scale of climate influence does not mean they should be dismissed.
In all the climate system, the time ‘lag’ of an event to an appearance of a detectable signal is, or rather should be – a good indicator of both the magnitude of the event AND/OR the sensitivity of the climate to the particular event. Pinatubo is credited with significant cooling, so surely this means that either climate sensitivity is very ‘sensitive’ to the total or indeed one or more of the eruptive effects (i.e. co2, dust, etc) or perhaps more explicity, it could be very very sensitive to only one part of the eruptive effects (e.g. aerosols/dust). This mention of orders of magnitude in differences of effects should be desperately confirmed as, in true alarmist fashion, the effects of a major eruption (say, Katla?) could indeed be very catastrophic if certain conditions prevail.
The scientific warmists already dismiss volcanic CO2 – so that’s not an issue – so presumably, it must be something else that acts as the major cooling inducing (-ve feedback) factor. Knowing what this is and the climate sensitivity to ‘it’ is clearly important. Again, this illustrates why the fixation with manmade CO2 is so wrong! If a major eruption takes place, CO2 may the only thing preventing massive cooling!
In my opinion, this is a paper (I’m sure there’ll be more listing other factors) that will be used if needed, to explain away any cooling we may have if the sun does go into a prolonged solar minimum and cooling does occur.
John Marshall says @ur momisugly July 12, 2011 at 2:39 am “Species of shellfish still seem happy to live in such acid water next to the vents.”
Not sure it make sense to project the marine ecosystem as a whole from some specialized species that do OK near the vents.
Interstellar Bill says:
July 11, 2011 at 9:04 pm
Unfortunately, a huge volcanic input to the stratosphere would give the Warmistas a decades-long excuse for the absence of any warming. Much better that the impending Solar Minimum get to do all the cooling by itself, thereby firmly destroying AGW, whereas a volcano totally lets them off the hook.
Not much evidence that individual stratospheric volcanos cause significant global cooling, Pinatubo was accompanied by a big drop in TSI. A whole bunch of volcanoes going off might make more of a difference.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2010/08/05/volcanos-dont-cause-global-cooling/
Mind you, now that TSI is classified information, we may never know…
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2011/07/12/latest-tsi-figures-sorry-thats-classified-information-sir/
mt says:
July 12, 2011 at 4:59 am (Edit)
The HadSST folks sure aren’t going to be happy about this. As we just learned from RealClimate:
“One odd feature of the HadSST2 collation was that the temperature impact of the 1883 Krakatoa eruption – which is very clear in the land measurements – didn’t really show up in the SST.
Like I’ve been saying all along, when cloud suddenly increases, cutting off the ocean from incoming solar radiation, the ocean responds by going into heat release mode. That’s why stratospheric volcanos don’t cause global cooling immediately. The ocean acts to smooth out the drop in insolation. But that means the ocean loses heat content, and the cold winters follow a few years later.
That’s why the increase in cloudiness after 1998 measured by project Earthshine didn’t hit us until 2007 when we got a big La Nina. The climatic reaction lags by around the length of the solar cycle.
Interstellar Bill says:
July 11, 2011 at 9:04 pm
“Unfortunately, a huge volcanic input to the stratosphere would give the Warmistas a decades-long excuse for the absence of any warming. Much better that the impending Solar Minimum get to do all the cooling by itself, thereby firmly destroying AGW, whereas a volcano totally lets them off the hook.”
It does not let them off the hook. They will undoubtedly try to use it as you say but at some point it is part and parcel of what is wrong with their CO2 theory. The bottom line is that CO2 would be more important to the climate (not as important as they have put into their models, of course) if nothing else was going on, but other variables are ALWAYS going about their business of varying. Solar radiation, ocean currents, volcanic eruptions, etc, etc, all contribute to the climate in unpredictable ways which is the proof that their AGW model is a lie. It’s like the advertising people who tell you that when your sales don’t improve they would have been worse if you had not advertised. Or the politicians that tell you that though unemployment is worse it would have been even more worse if they had not pissed billions of $$ away giving handouts to their friends.
RobJM says:
July 11, 2011 at 10:51 pm
The graph you linked to ( ftp://ftp.ssmi.com/msu/graphics/tls/plots/rss_ts_channel_tls_global_land_and_sea_v03_3.png ) shows that the stratospheric temp started rising in jan 1991, and almost reached the peak by jun 15th 1991, when the vulcano actually erupted. then it started coming down.
can you explain what caused the jump? or am i reading the graph wrong?
tallbloke:
The climate reaction indeed does lag by about the length of a solar cycle- 11 years. There is a close link between decadal (10 year) SOI values, and climate with a lag of about 11 years. Will post soon.
Ken
I don’t see any observed link between tropospheric areosol only spike trends and global surface temperature spike trends. Whereas cooling is defintely seen with significant increases in stratospheric areosol opical thickness. The graphs below corrects global temperatures with SAOT and the results are shown.
http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/4660/had3vsaotadj1900.png
Since 1900 and the changes just can’t remove anywhere near the cooling during 1940’s and 1970’s to even just make it flat.
http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/5816/had3vsaotadj1979.png
Since 1979 the adjustments for statopheric areosol optical thickness changes doesn’t even come close to prevent the pause in recent years.
And, Huh?, you have your basic vocab reversed. “Mitigation” means fixing the climate by cutting CO2, and is identical to “prevention”. “Adaptation” is the current correct word for coping with reality as it happens.
Anthony;
“significantly underestimated” significantly understates the size and impact of a factor of 10,000,000X to 100,000,000X.
Such a change is almost not in the same universe.
Tallbloke,
When I get the time I’m going to visit your site and study up on your ideas. I share your idea that a volcanic eruption actually can cause a release of heat from the oceans. To me it seems like it is a mid-term event, after the short-term cooling.
Both El Chiton and Pinatubo resulted in short-term cooling. I have a hunch that Pinatubo went off with perfect timing, repressing El Chiton’s mid-term warming. Because El Chiton’s mid-term warming could not happen, that inevitability was added to the Pinatubo mid-term warming. That might explain why the 1998 El Nino was so extraordinary. It combined the mid-term warming of two, big, tropical volcanoes.
I am struggling with the mechanics that might explain this process. The short-term cooling seems easy to explain, but the mid-term warming isn’t. I’ve come across vague statements like, “Volcanoes stimulate El Ninos,” but I like to see it drawn out logically, as: Volcano #1 causes A action which causes reaction B which causes re-reaction C.” (I prefer the word “reaction” to the word “feedback.”) I hope I find some insights at your site.
The real question is the long-term. The long-term is the most fun to try to figure out, but the truth is, “nobody really knows.”
As has been pointed out, 8 orders of magnitude is 100,000,000 and sounds like a huge amount. But what was the original estimate of the particles in question? If it was 1 part in 10^-15 and is now estimated to be 1 part in 10^-7, of what significance is this? And if a volcano goes off now, how much is the expected cloud cover expected to increase with the new estimates? Will it be even 1% more?
Perhaps they should also revisit the impact of human sulfur dioxide emissions, from that mid-century period when acid rain was the concern and the climate was cooler despite a solar grand maximum and increasing greenhouse gasses.
Well, this is some good news. Now when will the people claiming only chlorine from human produced chemicals, especially the very dense and ultra-stable, non-reactive chlorofluorocarbons, ever makes its way up to the ozone layer (ahead of the far lighter pure and natural chlorine molecules) while chlorine from seawater evaporation, volcanoes and other sources “rains out” before reaching that altitude – admit that Strombolian type eruptions provide an express elevator ride to the upper atmosphere to all kinds of nasty things, including chlorine and compounds of it?
I did some searching and found this:
http://www.igsoc.org/annals.old/14/igs_annals_vol14_year1990_pg176-182.pdf
Looking at the volcanic activity between 1930 and 1950, the temperatures in the arctic region would have been as warmer in the 1930s and 1940s than they are now.
Greenland was warmer anyhow:
“the warmest year in the extended Greenland temperature
record is 1941, while the 1930s and 1940s are the warmest decades.”
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/greenland/vintheretal2006.pdf