Eric Worrall writes:
The volcano Mount Sangeang Api in the Lesser Sunda Islands has just erupted, sending a huge ash cloud 12 miles into the air.
Wikipedia describes Sangeang Api as a volcano complex with 2 active cones, Doro Api 1,949 metres (6,394 ft) and Doro Mantoi. 1,795 m (5,889 ft). Indonesia has a number of very active volcanoes, including volcanoes which threaten major cities, such as the infamous Mount Merapi.
Merapi, which has erupted several times in the last decade, is located just 17 miles from the city of Yogyakarta, home of 2.5 million people.
Near equatorial volcanoes like Sangeang Api are useful to global warming modellers, as the ash cloud can usually be detected in both hemispheres. They provide a convenient excuse for the short term cooling of the entire Earth.
Some spectacular pictures in the following link:-
The pause was definitely caused by this eruption.
It turns out that the magma under this volcano is rich in thiotimoline, so it makes perfect sense.
Is that a flying saucer in the foreground? chuckle
When the AGWers use natural occurrences such as volcanoes or La Ninas to explain why global warming has “stalled” they shoot themselves in the foot. According to them, CO2 is the master control knob of climate. If one little volcano can counteract it’s effect, then they are indirectly admitting that their theory is completely false.
The GISS and NOAA have their orders to end the pause.
Volcanoes can erupt and create a year without a summer, the Arctic sea ice can reach record levels, the Antarctic sea ice can reach South Africa, the super el nino can turn into a super duper la nina.
It won’t matter, the GISS and NOAA will still produce numbers showing 2014 and/or 2015 as the warmest year ever.
12 miles? That’s into the stratosphere. Could be a significant event, climatewise, if there’s enough volume in the eruption. The Indonesian volcanoes have a lot of SO2, that generates the sulfate haze behind “Volcano Weather.”
Jim Brock says:
May 30, 2014 at 4:16 pm
> Is that a flying saucer in the foreground? chuckle
It’s a lenticular cloud. Common event around mountains.
97% of the scientist believe it is a flying saucer…so there.
Hooray, we have another year to frolic in our carbon intensive fun under our fortuitous ash umbrella, before we have to face “reality” again.
This will be a test of whether or not volcanoes really do cause cooling.
My personal experience in New Hampshire after Pinatubo was that the first winter wasn’t that bad, but after that winter we had a summer where the tomatoes never ripened.
It also will be interesting to see what sort of wrench this may throw in the works of the developing El Nino. Sunshine on the ocean fuels the trade winds that shape ENSO events, but the ash will cast a shadow. Where exactly will that shadow fall at first? As the ash disperses, where will the shadow fall second? How will the location of the shading effect the structures involved in the building-of or weakening-of the El Nino? (A shadow in one place might intensify a factor that the shadow in another place would weaken.)
The solution is bound to be subtle, not simple, but unfortunately the media is inhabited by simpletons. Prepare yourself to read articles so excruciatingly stupid that, well, you might want to visit your dentist beforehand, and find out how best to handle severe grinding of teeth.
The ash has closed Darwin airport:
“All flights in and out of Darwin International Airport have been cancelled following the eruption of Sangeang Api, off the northeast coast of the Indonesian island of Sumbawa on Friday evening.”
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/latest-news/volcanic-ash-closes-darwin-airport/story-fn3dxiwe-1226938115875
While volcanoes have become a fashionable ace-up-sleeve for alarmists, if some really dirty basaltic eruptions like Laki-Grimsvotn get going, it’s going to make it hard to make jet trails to climate conferences for a year of two. And with lots of grime and no sun on solar panels, solar might be the new black, and coal might be the new sustainable.
12 miles!…..uh, no
How much CO_2 is in that cloud? More than a couple of SUVs?
I hate to tell you that the so-called volcanic cooling is a fantasy. What happens is that the hot eruptive gases ascend into the stratosphere where they first warm it. A couple of years later the stratosphere does cool but this never reaches the troposphere. The so-called volcanic coolings identified by so-called “experts” are nothing more than La Nina coolings that accidentally happened to be where a volcanic cooling was expected. There are also eruptions where no cooling at all followed because by accident that spot was taken up by an El Nino warming. An example of an eruption followed by an alleged “cooling” is Pinatubo. That cooling assigned to it has nothing to do with the volcano but is simply the 1993 La Nina cooling. An example of a volcano without a following cooling is El Chichon because the spot where its cooing “ought to be” is occupied by the 1963 El Nino peak. I explained it all very clearly in my book “What Warming?” in 2010 but the so-called “climate” scientists are either too stupid or too arrogant to read the important literature in their own field. It even extends to climate models that have built-in code identifying all volcanic coolings, whether they actually exist or not.
YES volcanoes cause cooling. And furthermore, it increases rain and especially snow. We will have a hard winter and probably, not much in the way of summer since we are already in a cool cycle, this is rather dangerous.
1983 El Nino peak
I hate volcanos. They muddy the water in more ways than one.
Be nice, nobody’s said anything yet.
Which might be a good sign.
I’d rather read/see more about the volcano itself.
Leave the political implications to those that might dare to invoke them.
The 1315-1317 European famine was caused by a volcano. Erupted for 2 yrs. cooling the weather were the crops could not grow….
The lenticular cloud is more likely to be an artifact of the eruption cloud itself rather than being related to mountains. Similar to the cappus cloud one finds associated with convective cloud.
emsnews says: on May 30, 2014 at 5:08 pm:
“YES volcanoes cause cooling. And furthermore, it increases rain and especially snow.”
You are brainwashed, emsnews. They use accidental coincidences to make that claim. It so happens that the ENSO oscillation and the occurrence of volcanic eruptions are totally independent identities and when a volcano erupts its timing can put it anywhere between an El Nino peak and a La Nina valley of the ENSO system. As a consequence, there are also intermediate-sized “volcanic coolings” that just happened to straddle the ENSO peak/valley ensemble. Take a look at some volcanic cooling charts that also show the ENSO system well and do a little thinking instead of parroting dogma.
Arno Arrak says: “The so-called volcanic coolings identified by so-called “experts” are nothing more than La Nina coolings that accidentally happened to be where a volcanic cooling was expected.”
Once again, this is nonsense. There were no–zero, nada, none–no La Nina events from 1991 to 1994. Yet we can plainly sea that sea surface temperatures for the Atlantic, Indian and West Pacific oceans dropped, when they should have been warming in response to a series of El Nino events:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/figure-18-detrended-row-vs-nino3-4.png
The graph is from the post here:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2013/01/25/untruths-falsehoods-fabrications-misrepresentations/
It happens that I had just looked up an earlier article on lenticular clouds:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/09/earth-versus-the-flying-saucers/
emsnews says: on May 30, 2014 at 5:08 pm:
“YES volcanoes cause cooling. And furthermore, it increases rain and especially snow.”
You don’t know anything, emsnews. They use accidental coincidences to make that claim. It so happens that the ENSO oscillation and the occurrence of volcanic eruptions are totally independent identities and when a volcano erupts its timing can put it anywhere between an El Nino peak and a La Nina valley of the ENSO system. As a consequence, there are also intermediate-sized “volcanic coolings” that just happened to straddle the ENSO peak/valley ensemble. Take a look at some volcanic cooling charts that also show the ENSO system well and do a little thinking instead of spewing dogma.
Oops! There goes the super El Nino. THere are going to be some very disappointed alarmists.
Bob Tisdale says:
May 30, 2014 at 5:29 pm
I hate volcanos. They muddy the water in more ways than one.
====
LOL
Only 12 miles up? The Air Force will need a direction sign. 8<)
http://xkcd.com/1375/
How dare that volcano distract us from the start of (a lackluster) hurricane season!
Bob Tisdale: Arrak, and others:
Since 1996, there have essentially only been THREE months of noticeably lower atmospheric clarity!
Just THREE months during the entire 17 year “pause” in global warming
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/grad/mloapt/mlo_transmission.gif
So, since all three historic volcanoes ARE very visible in the transmission records since 1950, and since this volcano is coming near the “end” of a long string of weak La Nada’s and low El Nino’s, does this not imply the next two winters will be extraordinarily cold?
Watch the SO2 here.
http://satepsanone.nesdis.noaa.gov/pub/OMI/OMISO2/Alert/alert.html
With slow cooling the last 10 years or so (not just the ‘pause’) the volcano might take remaining inertia out of the 90s residue of heat and put us into a steeper unambiguous cooling even though the volcano’s effect is a blip of a few years and then recovery. In addition, partly counteracting the effect of the El Nino, and with an AMO turning cool (PDO already there) we may be in for many years of a noticeably cooler climate. Although there will be enough spin from the wounded alarmists to almost cancel out the planet’s coriolis effect, it will be CO2 as a prime mover of temperature that gets considerably cancelled out.
If this eruption becomes a bigee his could be a wonderful opportunity for Willis Eschenbach to predict from his thermostat theory what will happen with temperature over the next 5 years.
If the dust cloud obscures the sun, it will naturally get cooler, but will circle the earth and there is nothing we can do about that. 12 miles is not that high, as yet. But high enough for airlines to avoid.
We shall see how much volcanic dust there is in the stratosphere soon enough. It is easy to detect without fancy instruments: the color of sunrise and especially sunset also the color of the moon (redder, of course).
This fine dust takes time to settle and it comes down often as rain or snow because moisture collects around dust which also has an electrical charge. So more lightning in storms, too.
If we have several more mid-size eruptions while going through a cooling down stage due to the sun having fewer sunspots, this means colder weather for certain. Then there is the sulfur…
Hmmm. My thoughts on this potential ash veil, which are open to critique.
Trade winds during neutral and La Nina conditions blow at various speeds East to West and wind bursts in the other direction under the relative calm El Nino conditions blow West to East. A volcano explosion in Indonesia just when wind bursts are blowing towards the equatorial band responsible for ENSO events sends an ash veil over a very important part of our global temperature driver. This will cool the air in the equatorial band.
El Nino clouds develop because of evaporation from a warm calm sea surface to a cool atmosphere, made even cooler by the clouds that develop from that evaporation. If that air is even cooler because of an ash veil, we are going to have lots of heat being belched into the air. So it may warm that cooler air a bit but I would rather keep that heat in the oceans thank you very much. That ocean is gonna lose a LOT of heat! And it won’t be sent back into the ocean to keep us warm.
Depending on the extent of the ash cloud, this may not be good. Not good at all. Damn.
Perhaps a new “Volcano” page in the reference section? Quickly, quickly!
Pam don’t worry the ocean will retain heat even if the sun donna shine. It’s the SO2 we should worry about, that is known to cool the atmosphere.
@Bob Tisdale: Will this eruption be enough to cancel the effects of the predicted El Nino?
Ponchas, that is a good idea. Problem is we would have to correlate records but that shouldn’t be too hard for some. Personally I don’t have the expertise. The Toba eruption 70,000 years ago was thought to kill everyone in the vicinity of this Indonesia volcano, but who has the records only geologists and archaeologists perhaps.
Bob Tisdale says May 30, 2014 at 5:50 pm:
“Once again, this is nonsense. There were no–zero, nada, none–no La Nina events from 1991 to 1994. Yet we can plainly sea that sea surface temperatures for the Atlantic, Indian and West Pacific oceans dropped, when they should have been warming in response to a series of El Nino events”
Bob, you really do not understand the ENSO system and that is why your book is on the wrong track. You are quite mistaken about the lack of La Nina events between 1991 and 1994, There was a La Nina as big as life in 1993/94. Just take a look at the satellite temperature curve and stop fudging with a three-ocean cocktail you just threw out. ENSO is a harmonic oscillation of ocean water from side to side in the equatorial Pacific. It has world-wide influences and is present in all temperature curves but that does not change its origin. If you blow at the end of a glass tube you get its resonant tone which is determined by the dimensions of the tube. Trade winds are analogous to blowing across a tube and the ocean basin answers with its resonant tone – one El Nino peak every five yeas. That is the resonant frequency of ENSO. Oceanic conditions can change or even temporarily suppress it but when things quiet down the resonant frequency returns. You can find that as far back as the early nineteenth century.The westward flow is determined by the trade winds and the eastward flow is gravity flow along the equatorial counter-current. It takes the form of an El Nino wave carrying warm water that runs ashore in South America. There it spreads out along the coast, warms the air above it, interferes with trade winds, joins the westerlies, and we notice that an El Nino has arrived. But any wave that runs ashore must also retreat. When the El Nino wave retreats water level behind it drops 50 centimeters, cold water from below wells up, and a La Nina has started. They always occur in pairs and talk of El Nino-less periods is nonsense. As much as the El Nino warmed the atmosphere the La Nina will now cool it.This heat exchange is rather precise and there is nothing left over for global temperature change. But that is the normal way and in the ocean abnormal things also happen. One of them is a possible blockage of the equatorial counter-current ahead of a moving El Nino wave. When this happens, the momentum of the wave will spread it out in the middle of the ocean and an El Nino is generated on the spot instead of along the margin of the continent. This is called El Nino Modoki (or CP-El Nino). Its aftermath, however, is different because it never climbed up on the shore and the characteristics of the La Nina flow are different. That is the point where we really don’t have any details and the possibility of some heat loss to the ocean is there. Because of this uncertainty we need more money to research El Nino Modoki. The money is there of course, but guys who control it don’t know enough science to know what to do with it. And you now know most of what you need to know about ENSO.
bushbunny, brush up on your heat discharge understanding of ENSO processes. Geesh. You would think that as often as Bob has provided us with this basic information, it would fricken sink in.
Ok, so is there any hope that this summer will be a little cooler as a result? I live in the desert SW, and wouldn’t argue against missing a few 120 degree days.
And for any volcano experts out there – I’ve run across a research paper or two claiming that part of the reason the MWP occurred was lower level of volcanic activity. There isn’t any realistic way to actually determine global volcanic activity sufficiently to be able to make such a claim, is there? Or to compare to the global volcanic activity since 1950 to present day? Of course, whenever volcanic issues come up, I can’t help but think of all the ocean floor activity that we likely have no clue occurs… but can they actually get any meaningful data that way for global land surface volcanic activity?
It sure would be something to be flying along and see something like that outside the plane’s windows as seen by the amazing photos the one professional photog. got… wonder if they’ll get much show on the Space Station?
Pinatubo’s 1991 climatic eruption reached 21 miles plus the eruption cloud was extremely thick and wide. There were three or four large eruptions with cloud heights above 13 miles.
Pinatubo’s eruptions are estimated to have dropped the world’s temperature by 0.5 degree for a couple of months (Even wikiped admits this).
What we have here at Sangeang Api is a largish eruption. The event has not yet been called and listed on the V.E. (Volcanic explosive) scale.
In the overall scheme of things this is not yet a climate changer.
History tells us that this particular volcanoes eruptions often start with a biggish bang (Vulcanian type eruptions) which later turn to smaller Strombolian events.
Indonesia has over 100 active volcanoes. So far this is just another typical eruption inasmuch as there are not many local people affected because it’s located on an uninhabited island.
I’ll stick my neck out and predict that the next climate altering eruption – ala Tambora – will be sometime in the future somewhere in Indonesia. When? It’s impossible to know.
Well maybe Pam I am not into ENSO processes, like you and Bob, but where is the proof that previous volcanic eruptions have had an effect on oceans? In as much as cooling them and altering ocean currents? Submarine volcanic eruptions or vents usually heat up the ocean, but I may be wrong of course. I am more concerned with the cooling effects. Sorry it didn’t ‘fricken sink in’, we are in separate mind sets.
My 5th grade students (who all had writing issues) studied the Toba eruption and subsequent bottleneck in human population numbers. Of my students, two students who chose this topic (the general writing topic was “World’s Largest Explosions –they were all boys so go figure) were topnotch science students who could not write much at all. Until that is, I started using science topics instead of “what I did last summer” for writing tasks.
The Toba volcano event was a nasty explosion with lots of belching and burping. I wonder if that ash veil stayed around the equatorial belt long enough to seriously decrease any opportunity for the oceans to recharge at their most important recharging belt: The equatorial belt. The currents may have continued to function but the water was much colder, and in important ice dam building areas of the globe, leading to further glaciation. It may have taken a long time before the oceans regained the heat they lost even after the ash had been rained out. Recharging the oceans may be a very difficult thing to do in light of all the things that can get in front of ol’Sol’s rays.
Arno Arrak says, May 30, 2014 at 5:42 pm
Nonsense as Bob already said:
http://s23.postimg.org/cd3cct65l/Volc.png
Notice what happened to the rate of CO2 increase. You could also argue that Pinatubo at 15.14°N followed shortly after by Hudson at 45.90°S might have had some bearing on the 1998 Super El Nino by throwing the northern and southern hemisphere distribution of energy away from the tropics out of whack. Sure, that’s a bit of a stretch ~6 years later but such is chaos. Take a look at this:
http://s23.postimg.org/bmam713s9/Chaos.png
Pam et al, just Google the number of active volcanoes on this planet right now. I don’t argue that volcanic eruptions can effect glaciation, there is dust in ice cores in the Arctic Greenland. And on floating icebergs. Anyway, don’t worry, it won’t be just volcanoes that push the climate into another ice age or mini ice age alone, other variables will be active forces. I’m concerned with Mt.Vesuvius, if she blows again, like in 79 AD, not 1944 as that was a lava event, that will effect Europe. But Australia didn’t actually suffer from the last glaciation like the Northern Hemisphere, even though we are near the ring of fire.
I just cannot understand how volcanoes could have “caused” the LIA under any reasonable assumptions: Modern atmospheric clarity indexes prove – based on real world numbers! – that even the largest modern (northern hemisphere and near-equator) volcanoes “clear” out within 3 years.
To claim that a volcanoes caused a 450 year cooling period requires a near-continuous volcanic eruption the size of Pinatubo every two years from 1400 through 1800. Or a Tambora eruption every three years the same period.
And that did NOT happen.
Tambora did cause a global cooling effect, that caused famines. No sun, no rain, no food.
Pamela Gray says:
May 30, 2014 at 7:06 pm
Hmmm. My thoughts on this potential ash veil, which are open to critique.
I agree this might be bad. Will the Walker Circulation collapse?
The Walker Circulation is weaker under El Nino conditions, stronger under La Nina conditions. It seems to me that adding ash to the system would further slow down the Walker Circulation as it depends on moist air being driven Westward and there are no westward winds blowing strongly at the moment. Under El Nino conditions the moist air kinda hangs around where it is belched out of the oceans, rising to create clouds right then and there. So I don’t know if it will make the Walker Circulation collapse. It is hoped that eventually what triggers the trade winds to begin to blow again will happen. If THAT trigger is halted, we got problems. Why? The clouds and ash will continue to hang over the equator possibly preventing recharge of ocean heat. According to my speculation.
Where’s the proof that volcanic eruptions affect trade winds. Or Jet streams. The dust or ash only lasts a few years and considering the amount of volcanoes erupting right now at one time, can we not expect some effect? Believe it or not, before the last glacial period concluded, Japan was not settled, because of the number of seismic and volcanic eruptions. Glacial periods don’t seem to settle volcanic eruptions rather increase them in some regions. Now why?
There were 24 eruptions between 1335 and 1360, but by then temperatures had already fallen steeply. Those were followed 250 years later by 90 or so eruptions in the middle of the LIA.
Bushbunny says: “If the dust cloud obscures the sun, it will naturally get cooler, but will circle the earth and there is nothing we can do about that. 12 miles is not that high, as yet. But high enough for airlines to avoid.”
But if we send up vacuum planes to gather all this dust, everything will be fine and the Alarmists will then get their predicted hot weather back.
Let’s see how big this eruption gets before we start changing the world’s weather/climate system too much.
Arno, sometimes more is less.
I’ve lived through a few El Nino events here on the east coast of Australia. This autumn reminds me of some previous big ones – 1983, and 1998. If this coming El Nino really is of that magnitude, it will easily swamp some piddly volcano, and the temperature trend chart will once again have an upward slope. That’s all speculative, of course, because no-one can really predict the El Nino cycle. I’m just saying it feels that way to me, and I’m a bit uneasy because it means that I’m in agreement with the mainstream press, which is also predicting a big El Nino.
The Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre’s projections of the ash plume’s path from Sangeang.
http://resources3.news.com.au/images/2014/05/31/1226938/227915-bd161c02-e872-11e3-a302-2981935fe9a0.jpg
More like SE Australia will be effected.
TinyCO2 says:
May 30, 2014 at 6:39 pm
Watch the SO2 here.
http://satepsanone.nesdis.noaa.gov/pub/OMI/OMISO2/Alert/alert.html
That SO2 data is from the Kelud eruption in February 2014
The “saucer” ring is a condensed water vapor cloud, not smoke. You can see similar formations where there is strong convection (which an erupting volcano most certainly is!) in a very moist atmosphere (which would be where this is). There is also another one at the top of the plume.
I am not yet convinced that this got into the stratosphere as you will usually see hints of a thunderstorm anvil-like formation along the tropopause (even if the vertical motion goes beyond that), and I don’t see that in these images. But if it did, along with the likely La Nina for next year (when the volcanic cooling will also maximize), this is not going to look good in the temperature record.
And at 250 hPa wind direction is SE http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/250hPa/orthographic=-225.44,-10.21,1898 equivalent to FL 340. Should slow air traffic down.
Should be interesting to see what it does for the start of winter here in Oz on 1 June. Personally, I am more concerned about the forecast for rain in the next couple of days. Rain, wipers and fine volcanic ash is a nasty mix when dealing with your windscreen (“wind shield” for you in The States). Flights into and out of Darwin have already been cancelled.
So far, reports don’t seem to say this is a really big eruption. “Subplinian” is one term, the volcano has erupted multiple times in the last few centuries, in 1985-88, 1966, 1964-65, 1958, 1957, 1956, 1955, 1954, 1954, 1953, 1927, 1912, 1911, 1860, 1821, 1715, 1512.
So while a decent size event, it looks like it won’t be much of a game changer. News coverage seems to be more focused on flight delays in Darwin than on the volcano.
Not worth bickering about, it seems.
Wrong headline… You should have put “excuse” in quotation marks, while you shouldn’t have put ‘pause’… So really, why excuse? If there is a substantial erruption with such effect, how does that fact/effect become an excuse? It would be a possible, valid explanation, not an excuse. But of course we would have to wait and see, first.
Is there doubt that volcanic activity can have such effect, and if not, what is the point of this article?
Arno Arrak says:
May 30, 2014 at 7:39 pm
According to what I assume is the Nino 3.4 temperature plot in http://postimg.org/image/wkgs543mv/full/ , the anomaly between mid-1989 through mid-1995 was above -0.5. No La Nina conditions, let alone a real La Nina. Please explain.
Well it is drizzling here on the Northern Tablelands of NSW in Armidale. Because it is overcast we won’t get frost here. But humidity is 90% and we should get a bit more rain, keep fingers crossed.
Ric Werme says:
May 30, 2014 at 4:30 pm
“12 miles? That’s into the stratosphere…”
If it did make it there, the injected SO2 will peak at sulfate formation in about two to three weeks. That charge of sulfate will contribute to the Junge layer, and in about 40 to 80 months will have sedimented out.
http://volcanocafe.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/so2-h2so4-e-folding-bluthjg.png
Sorry, “two to three months.”
The only volcanos I am worried about are Yellowstone and Toba. Even Mt St Helens, Pinatubo or Hood I could give a flip about. The super volcanos should make everyone uneasy because they threaten our food supply. The rest are just pretty pictures and nice sunsets.
Sheesh!! After reading most of these comments I am even more confused. My feelings are to stock up on fuel for my stove now, before the rush starts.
Keith Minto says:
May 30, 2014 at 10:15 pm
And at 250 hPa wind direction is SE http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/250hPa/orthographic=-225.44,-10.21,1898 equivalent to FL 340. Should slow air traffic down.
Winds come from, Keith. The chart shows NW’lies.
Arno Arrak says: “As much as the El Nino warmed the atmosphere the La Nina will now cool it.This heat exchange is rather precise and there is nothing left over for global temperature change. ”
While I agree with most of you comments about El Nino this is specious.
The way in which head transfers from ocean to air is nice symmetric pendulum swing. While there almost certainly are atmospheric feedbacks that affect SST , warm air does not warm the worlds oceans. To suggest this a “rather precise” net zero process is frankly ridiculous.
This fallacy is one of the corner-stones of AGW and it took untrained Bob Tisdale to point it out.
I was a tad brief, “wind direction is towards the SE”.
Arno Arrak says: “ENSO is a harmonic oscillation of ocean water from side to side in the equatorial Pacific.”
All those years I spent in electronics, particularly those working with state of the art military equipment must have been wasted on me. I obviously knew nothing about oscillators, oscillations or harmonics. Not sure how I repaired all that equipment that has those processes as the basis of it’s very function. Guess I was just plain lucky.
Also Rick Werne at 10.45pm is right on the money.
Arno Arrak says: “You are quite mistaken about the lack of La Nina events between 1991 and 1994, There was a La Nina as big as life in 1993/94. Just take a look at the satellite temperature curve”
http://postimg.org/image/wkgs543mv/full/
Indeed. After El Chinon there was rise in global temps (so much for the global cooling effect) and after Mt Pinatubo there was a drop.
That does not mean that there is NO cooling effect in the years following a major eruption but that blinkered vision and cherry-picked periods will lead to spurious attribution.
Here I have processed the Mt P optical depth data with an exponential decay ( relaxation to the mean response ) and it matches the tropical climate radiative changes.
http://climategrog.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/tropical-feedback_resp-fcos.png?w=843
I’m trying to get some competent ‘peers’ to review this before publishing the article but this new eruption may allow a test once some data comes in .
Greg Goodman: A mistake to call Bob Tisdale untrained. His background as I understand it is engineering in fluid dynamics. Trained in the very discipline required to understand and interpret ENSO and the ocean atmospheric interaction. Bob please correct me if I’m wrong.
The eruption is just in time for the long-desired El Nino. The Thermageddonites have another escape route.
All the major volcanic eruptions are correlated with important variations in solar activity (variations in the interplanetary magnetic field). In the last two weeks, the solar activity has collapsed.
It’s a solar max, disguise in the a solar minimum. Deep solar minimum = great geophysical event
http://michelecasati.altervista.org/index.html
Definitely looks to be hitting tropopause: classic anvil spreading
http://www.wired.com/2014/05/explosive-eruption-at-sangeang-api-in-indonesia/
http://volcanocafe.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/so2-h2so4-e-folding-bluthjg.png
GeoLurking says:
May 30, 2014 at 10:58 pm
Sorry, “two to three months.”
=========
Thanks, useful graph.
If the time-const is just under three months you would usually say it has ‘gone’ after 5 time-constants, not one. (depending upon what proportion of peak level is defined as “gone”).
Arno Arrak says: “Bob, you really do not understand the ENSO system and that is why your book is on the wrong track.”
There’s nothing wrong with my book. The errors are in your gross misunderstandings of ENSO and your horrendous portrayals of the processes that govern them.
Arno Arrak says: “You are quite mistaken about the lack of La Nina events between 1991 and 1994, There was a La Nina as big as life in 1993/94.”
A La Niña is characterized by a cooling of the sea surface temperatures of the eastern and central equatorial Pacific. Here’s a link to NOAA’s Oceanic NINO index. In 1993 and in 1994, the ONI NINO3.4 sea surface temperature anomalies did not even reach into negative values.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears_1971-2000_climo.shtml
A La Niña is also characterized by a positive Southern Oscillation Index. The fact that La Niña conditions did NOT exist in 1993 and 1994 is also confirmed by the Southern Oscillation Index, Arno. There are no extended periods with SOI values in excess of +8.0 during those years:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/soihtm1.shtml
Once again, Arno, data contradict your misunderstandings of ENSO.
Greg Goodman says: “Indeed. After El Chinon there was rise in global temps (so much for the global cooling effect)…”
You’re forgetting the countering effects of the 1982/83 El Nino, Greg. It was second in strength to the 1997/98 El Nino in the 20th Century.
Greg Goodman says to Arno: “While I agree with most of you comments about El Nino this is specious.”
Most of Arno’s comments about ENSO are misleading, misrepresentative of basic ENSO processes, and not supported by data.
Sorry, the 3 months there is the peak not the fitted time constant. The tail shows it reaching insignificant levels (circa 1%) after about 30mo. My Pinatubo response curve lasts about 4.5 years, due to the lag added by the climate system. Principally ocean thermal inertia.
Bob Tisdale says:
May 31, 2014 at 1:24 am
Greg Goodman says: “Indeed. After El Chinon there was rise in global temps (so much for the global cooling effect)…”
You’re forgetting the countering effects of the 1982/83 El Nino, Greg. It was second in strength to the 1997/98 El Nino in the 20th Century.
====
I’m not forgetting anything Bob, I’m pointing out that one can’t have it both ways. If ENSO mattered in 82 it mattered in 92. This shows that most of what is usually attributed to Mt P is confounded with what would have happened anyway. The natural variation either side of both eruptions was far bigger than any volcanic dip. Quite how the two can be separated is less simple.
From the flux data we can see that there was a fairly smooth periodic variaiton under-lying the Mt.P dip. The effect on surface temps is a lot more noisy and a lot less clear.
http://climategrog.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/erbe_adaptive_anom.png?w=814
BTW this new eruption should provide some useful insight since ENSO is fairly calm.
Alan Poirier says: “@Bob Tisdale: Will this eruption be enough to cancel the effects of the predicted El Nino?”
I don’t know enough about the strength of this volcano to answer your question. If this volcanic eruption was a strong as El Chichon, then it could suppress the effects of a strong El Nino. If it was a strong as Mount Pinatubo (and don’t believe it was), then it could overwhelm a strong El Nino.
Heh, guess no one else got the thiotimoline reference.
It’s so reactive that it actually reacts with water before you add it.
Greg Goodman, is there any way you can remove the coordinates of the East Pacific (90S-90N, 180-80W) from ERBE data? That should cut down on the influence of ENSO.
David
The problem with the volcano theory, as with the example you cite and also 1258 and 1816 is that the weather had ALREADY turned down prior to the volcano and improved shortly after. Any effect appears short term and did not appear to precipitate the LIA as claimed by Miller and Mann,.
Here is an account of the weather in Britain around that 1315/6 period you cite;
——- ——- —–
1309/10
Around Christmas great frost and ice on the thames which was used as a passageway
‘such masses of encrusted ice were on the thames that men took their way thereon from queenhithe in southwark and from westminster into London and it lasted so long that the people indulged in dancing in the midst of it near a certain fire made on the same and hunted a hare with dogs in the midst of the thames; London bridge was in great peril and permanently damaged. And the bride a Rochester and the other bridges standing in the current were wholly broken down,.’
Said to be a north wind blowing then a great thaw and flooding that rose so fast the king had to hastily leave Salisbury cathedral lest he drowned. . this rage endured for two days.
1313 the past year was nether cloudy nor serene neither disturbed nor calm-an ordinary year
1314 great wind and rain through much of the year ‘so not seven serene days together could be found’
Generally there seemed to be great famines 1314-1316 caused by wet weather
the rain lasted from Whitsun of 1314 to Easter of 1315.
1315 great inundations of rain for nearly the whole year
1316 great inundation of rain in the summer and autumn
Said to be the last serious famine in England.
1317 very good summer and an early and plentiful harvest.
1318 in Ireland snow the like of which had not been seen for a long time fell.
1321 very hot dry summer according to Short.
Here are the actual crop references from the great Winchester church estates for the period which shows an already wet period.
1312 winter wet summer no ref autumn very wet and long
1313 winter wet summer no ref autumn very wet and long
1314 winter hard summer no ref autumn very wet and long
1315 winter wet flooding summer very wet flooding autumn very wet and long flooding
1316 winter flooding summer unstable flooding autumn wet flooding
1317 no weather ref but flooding reported
1318 winter no ref summer very dry autumn wet
——- ——
tonyb
“A La Niña is characterized by a cooling of the sea surface temperatures of the eastern and central equatorial Pacific. Here’s a link to NOAA’s Oceanic NINO index.”
I really have little time for an “index” based on a runny mean of 3mo averages in the presence of 6mo and 12mo cycles. That’s typical climatologists Mickey Mouse data processing.
If the volcano affects tropical SST how can you use a tropical SST index to determine what ENSO was doing, independently of the volcano? Certainly not by picking a few values off a table.
Equally tropical SST affects tropical SLP so SOI is confounding the effects too.
The problem is the variability in the surface records is as big or larger than the effect of volcanoes. They may not be inseparable but it’s going to need careful work.
TonyB ” Any effect appears short term and did not appear to precipitate the LIA as claimed by Miller and Mann,.”
My estimation is that a major eruption causes extra tropical cooling for about 4-5 years, near zero cooling in tropics. NO longer term offset.
On the contrary, there is a drop in stratospheric temps , which implies more energy making it to surface:
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=902
Now compare to reflected short-wave:
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=955
This latter effect may not be true of historic eruptions but one affect of Mt Pinatubo was 2 watt/metre2 EXTRA incoming energy after it had all settled out.
So far this seems to have gone conveniently unnoticed .
In case that’s not clear enough : volcanoes (at least late 20th ones) cause long-term WARMING not cooling
Let’s look at the stratosphere. What is the temperature at a height of 12 km?
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_MEAN_ALL_EQ_2013.gif
Greg
Nasa says that volcanos can cause winter warming which again seems to be forgotten. Their effect is certainly generally not as clear cut or as dramatic as the AGW narrative claims
tonyb
How was temperature at the equator in 1998 at the height of 12 km? Is not the same?
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_MEAN_ALL_EQ_1998.gif
The temperature in the stratosphere changes only due to ionization.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_MEAN_ALL_NH_2013.gif
Greg says
“I really have little time for an “index” based on a runny mean of 3mo averages in the presence of 6mo and 12mo cycles. That’s typical climatologists Mickey Mouse data processing.”
Well at the moment it is a useful parameter that DOES allow us to make pretty reasonable conclusions about heat transfer in the ocean and associated transfer to the atmos. If the index is useless as you seem to think then I challenge you to come up with a more useful and use able alternative that is robust.
Boo! hoo! Sob! sob! There’s always some damn natural force getting in the way of global warming…first it was natural variability, then heat-eating oceans, and then polar vortices, now it’s a stupid volcano!!! Sniff…sniff!
Another update http://www.volcanodiscovery.com/sangeangapi/news/45013/Sangeang-Api-volcano-Sunda-Islands-Indonesia-eruption-continues-ash-spreads-to-Australia.html
David Said
“The 1315-1317 European famine was caused by a volcano. Erupted for 2 yrs. cooling the weather were the crops could not grow….”
Trouble is the volcano usually blamed was in New Zealand and the cooling was confined to NW Europe. Its hardly coincidence that this happened at the end of the Mediaeval Warm Period and we know from similar episodes in the 17th and 18th centuries the onset of a cooling period can produce extreme weather and consequent famines.
Terry” If the index is useless as you seem to think then I challenge you to come up with a more useful and use able alternative that is robust.”
A fair challenge but if I have to redo all that crap processing that is done in climatology just so this it can be ignored and the same garbage produced, I don’t think one man’s life time is enough. That does not mean that I do not have the right to criticise what is not done properly or chose not to use an index that I see as unreliable.
So I would suggest those who want such an index work out what they are trying to filter in/out and define a spec. then write a filter that fits the spec. That’s how engineering and science works.
About time those that get paid for this sort of thing learn enough of the last 2 or 3 centuries of science to do the job.
ren says:
How was temperature at the equator in 1998 at the height of 12 km? Is not the same?
That was 12 MILES (19km) not 12km . What was the point you were making with the graphs?
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ONI_change.shtml
Due to a significant warming trend in the Niño-3.4 region since 1950, El Niño and La Niña episodes that are defined by a single fixed 30-year base period (e.g. 1971-2000) are increasingly incorporating longer-term trends that do not reflect interannual ENSO variability. In order to remove this warming trend, CPC is adopting a new strategy to update the base period.
===
So even the base period for the “anomaly” is shifting .
Someone needs to stop all this ad hoc piecemeal, poking around and define what this “index” is supposed to measure. It looks like some kind of ill-defined and poorly implemented band pass filter.
I’m with you on this one, Greg. It’s an arbitrary index. When I ask, only-semi rhetorically, what are the S.I. units of ENSO? I end up more confused about what it is supposed to represent.
Some of the cooling associated with Tamboro in 1815 may have been associated with a perturbed jet stream that created an amazing cross-polar-flow. I don’t claim to understand the dynamics, but a huge amount of ice was apparently flushed from the Arctic Ocean into the North Atlantic, and icebergs were coming ashore in Ireland. It may have been the cooled Atlantic, rather than ash causing less sunlight, that caused “The Year Without A Summer.”
I was always puzzled by the fact Tamboro is associated with less ice in the arctic. We had an interesting discussion about this puzzle last year: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/08/1815-1816-and-1817-a-polar-puzzle/
To be honest, the effect of volcanoes remain a mystery to me, but I do like the discussions about the mystery here at Watts Up With That.
From the same ref: “So, ONI values during 1950-1955 will be based on the 1936-1965 base period, ONI values during 1956-1960 will be based on the 1941-1970 base period, and so on and so forth.
In real-time operations, the past 30-year base period (e.g. 1981-2010) will continue to be used to compute the departure from average.”
====
It’s gets worse the close you look. Now it seems the older data uses a centred reference period and the recent years uses a lagged one. This confused mess is supposed to indicate a history of ENSO.?
In a desperate attempt to present ENSO as an “internal oscillation” they have removed the inter-decadal variation.
Wait , there’s more:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/detrend.nino34.ascii.txt
So even the base Nino34 SST used to derive this was detrended before we start.
Let me see if I can recap.
Nino34 SST
take monthly average (resample at irregular calendar months without anti-alias filter)
detrend ( without saying why a linear model should be fitted to the data)
find “climatology” of 30 year segments changed every 5 years. (Why not every year?)
subtract climatology from detrended SST (reduce annual variability )
take three month running mean of monthly means ( distorting low pass filter)
define arbitrary threshold based on arbitrary 5 month sample of 3 month means of climatology adjusted detrended monthly means …. of Nino34 SST.
I hope I haven’t missed anything.
So, Michael, the units would be degree C ( or Kelvin ) but what it represents seems less clear.
Let’s see.
“average” sub-annual variability removed with adaptive anomaly method.
Full period long term “trend” is removed. (not clear why)
Base line of climatologies are not aligned so 5 year staircase adjustment introduced.
Crude 3 mo running mean filter reduces residual sub-annual and introduces spurious frequencies
Then they use what is left of the mangled short term variability to “detect” Nino / Nina periods.
I am not at all surprised that they have “spring time barrier” where predictions are unreliable.
Any way that’s enough of that. This is supposed to be about a new volcano that should give a new chance to measure and evaluate the effects of aerosols on climate.
Should be interesting.
Greg Goodman says: “I really have little time for an “index” based on a runny mean of 3mo averages in the presence of 6mo and 12mo cycles. That’s typical climatologists Mickey Mouse data processing.”
I presented ONI for Arno, because Arno apparently has a hard time interpreting graphs. If you had asked, Greg, I would have presented a graph of NINO3.4 SST anomalies:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/monthly-nino3-4.png
climatereason says: “Nasa says that volcanos can cause winter warming which again seems to be forgotten.”
The research was done by Alan Robock of Rutgers:
http://www.envsci.rutgers.edu/~robock/
Greg Goodman says:
May 31, 2014 at 1:08 am
> Definitely looks to be hitting tropopause: classic anvil spreading
http://www.wired.com/2014/05/explosive-eruption-at-sangeang-api-in-indonesia/
How about this one:
If anything made it into the stratosphere, it’s a tiny percentage of what had erupted. I won’t be looking for amazing sunsets in New Hampshire.
I found that at http://volcanocafe.wordpress.com/2014/05/31/sangeang-api-lesser-sunda-islands-indonesia-eruption-30-may-2014/ . He has some other images, including that one at Wired.
Greg Goodman says: “From the same ref: “So, ONI values during 1950-1955 will be based on the 1936-1965 base period, ONI values during 1956-1960 will be based on the 1941-1970 base period, and so on and so forth.”
I linked the old version of ONI for Arno, Greg.
I’ve already commented on the new version of ONI:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2012/06/05/comments-on-noaas-recent-changes-to-the-oceanic-nino-index-oni/
Bob Tisdale says:
May 31, 2014 at 5:38 am
No sign of “a La Nina as big as life in 1993/94” in that graph either. 🙂 Perhaps it was visiting the fjords.
With an ash column 15 to 20 kms high and with a high SO2 content, this volcano has the potential to provide a cooling dip. I guess it depends if there are further eruptive phases.
The ash column is already about 300 kms long and appears to be quite thick. You can zoom into the location and see it on the Modis satellites with Modis Worldview.
https://earthdata.nasa.gov/labs/worldview/
If it is going to produce a cooling dip, we should be able to tell through the daily stratosphere temperatures. Mount Pinatubo produced a +1.5C spike in stratosphere temperatures which started 12 days after the main eruption. This volcano probably happened too late in May to show up in the May temperatures but it will be clear by the time June temps come out. Daily UAH lower stratosphere and lower troposphere temps. Stratospheric Volcano Eruptions provide a very clear signal.
http://s30.postimg.org/5h9be8s7l/Daily_UAH_LT_LS_Volcs_Mar14.png
Was the Darwin airport close down a result of modelled projections of ash cover like in the Icelandic errustions a few years ago that brought the EU airspace to a grinding halt? 12 miles is ~63k feet!
Thanks for the daily plot. It’s true that we get too much smoothed/filtered detrended , anomalified data.
So what is your down arrow in 1982 supposed to be? The data goes up and you indicate an arrow in completely the other direction.
Note, the longer term downward trend runs from 1978 to 1984. The only credible correlation with El Chinon is POSITIVE bump with a lag of about 6mo (very roughly by eye, with your x-axis) . I see abolsutely no indication of dip that is anti-correlated with TLS.
Mt P: the dip in TLT does correlate if we spread the effect as I did with a decaying response. However, it has to be noted that there was a very similar dip about 4 years earlier of very nearly the same magnitude. What enables the conclusion that the second one ( which we already see starting a year BEFORE the eruption) is caused by volcanism and the first one wasn’t.
There is a heave degree of confirmation bias in all this. It’s significant how often presentations focus on Mt P and ignore the previous one that “doesn’t work”.
I’ll have a closer look at daily TLS. It looks like there could be something useful I can pull out of it.
PS Bill, what’s that last arrow on TLS supposed to show? You just hand drew a line from the low point to the highpoint or what?
It you want to play with straight lines fit a linear model from 1994 to 2014 and I’d bet it’s very near zero slope. Then you will note what my lowpass filtered graph showed: Mt Pintubo caused a 0.5K cooling step in TLS.
Then we can address the question of where the extra 2 W/m2 of SW that did not get reflected back out went to in that period.
Greg Goodman says:
May 31, 2014 at 7:16 am
———————–
There was a Super-El Nino in 1982-83. Troposphere temps should have spiked similar to 1997-98 but instead, temps were flat or down quite a bit by 1984. I’ve got the impact of the 1982 El Chichon eruptions at -0.3C for the lower troposphere temps (going back to 1958 here adding in HadAT to the record which provides for a few more eruptions to look at).
http://s2.postimg.org/ojsxh3vbt/UAH_RSS_Had_AT_Volc_Impact.png
Just another every-other-year volcano. Takes a big one to affect anything other than a local/regional area.
Greg Goodman says:
May 31, 2014 at 7:25 am
PS Bill, what’s that last arrow on TLS supposed to show? You just hand drew a line from the low point to the highpoint or what?
——————————–
Lower stratosphere temperatures appear to slowly recover over up to 25 years after a major stratospheric eruption. The idea is that Ozone is depleted by a the large eruptions and then it takes a long time for the Ozone to rebuild. If you have successive eruptions in a row, the Ozone does not have time to recover and one can get a long-term decline in stratosphere temperatures since there is less UV solar radiation intercepted in the stratosphere. This allows more solar radiation to reach the surface instead and we have long-term warming at the surface from the eruptions (versus the short-term cooling impact).
MSU equivalent temps from radiosondes going back to 1958.
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadat/images/update_images/msu_timeseries.png
This is a counter-argument to global warming theory that forecasts cooling in the stratosphere (which does show up in the record, its just that I think it is more a volcanic signature rather than a GHG signal).
What’s HadAT ? Never heard of that.
Sorry Bill , what you are presenting is totally inconsistent. Why would you expect an instantaneous correlation? A change in forcing implies a change in dT/dt . Only when that system has time to approach equilibrium can you talk about a final delta T.
I suggest you have read of what the integrated climate response would look like:
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=884
12 miles high is only a small distance into the stratosphere. The tropopause height in the tropics averages 56,000 ft, 11 miles. If 12 miles is the top of the eruption cloud, little material will be in the stratosphere and the bulk will rain out of the troposphere fairly quickly.
I found a reference for estimate historical plume height here:
http://www.academia.edu/4440754/Plume_height_volume_and_classification_of_volcanic_eruptions_based_on_the_Weibull_function
Pinatubo is listed at 40 km, 24 miles.
“This is a counter-argument to global warming theory that forecasts cooling in the stratosphere (which does show up in the record, its just that I think it is more a volcanic signature rather than a GHG signal).”
Indeed, that is what my graph of TLS shows but again your hand drawn straight lines are showing what you think is the explanation not what the data shows.
OK, I’ve found HadAT, large uncertainty but may be worth a look.
My recollection of reading analysis by Joe Bastardi & Joe D’Aleo is that tropical volcanoes will decrease the global temp average but not necessarily make NH winters any colder. Conversely, a high latitude NH volcano can decrease NH temps, especially winter temps , but not necessarily be seen in the global temp average.
Given latest estimates of 20 km height , compared to other larger events, it would seem unlikely that any changes in global temps from this event would be decernable from general background variations in the global temp datasets.
I will be visiting Indonesia in August -2014 and hope to trek to Mount Merapi.Trekking to Volcanic mountains is the last unpredictable adventure on planet Earth .This lastest Volcanic erruption proves the fact that we humans are still at the mercy of nature despite scientific discoveries.
hmmmm. Does it matter how high or how much? Or is “where” more important?
[Actually, the mods were wondering was Pamela’s fishing when Pamela was fishing where Pamela was fishing wides? .mod]
Thanks, Eric. Good post.
The immense power of nature!
Go sequester the CO2 from volcanoes, and remember they keep spewing it for years after the eruption.
Ah, the futility of fighting nature and the whole world. Even the Germans are burning more and more coal, no to mention China and India. It is futile but very harmful for mankind.
I should add “when” as well, alongside “where”.
Wrote an essay on this a few months ago for the next book (in fact the book is titled after this essay), so an reasonably current. Whether this eruption affects climate for more than a few months (3-4, to be precise) depends on how much of the volcanic aerosol punches through the tropopause and reaches the stratosphere, which near the equator is about 18 km high. If little does, the rest will wash out fairly quickly. Sarychev, VEI 4 on the Kamtchka peninsula, reached 20km and the tropopause there is 15 km. Yet 95% of the total volcanic aerosol still washed out in 3 months. See Jegou et. al. in ATM. Chem. Phys. 13: 6533-6552 (2013).
Most VEI 4 do not much affect the stratosphere. Of the last 9, only Sarychev did at all. Piñatubo was VEI 6.
This eruption is not over, and could have more strong pulses. Something to keep an eye on.
:cirby says:
May 30, 2014 at 4:16 pm
The pause was definitely caused by this eruption.
It turns out that the magma under this volcano is rich in thiotimoline, so it makes perfect sense.”
I appreciated your reference to Isaac Asimov’s joke paper
http://io9.com/5887014/meet-thiotimoline-the-chemical-compound-isaac-asimov-invented-to-spoof-boring-science-writing
a few good resources for those non-geologists in the room:
http://geology.com/stories/13/volcanic-explosivity-index/
http://www.wired.com/category/eruptions/
Not looking like that big an event unless things change dramatically going forward.
One interesting note from the wired site 186 Taupo New Zealand eruption is suggested to be ultraplinian. is there a noted corresponding cooling period in the record?
Unless someone can provide a detailed weather prediction for 2014/2015 an eruption this size would not be distinguishable from background with error bars. Maybe, just maybe I could be convinced of this eruptions impact if Mann provided me a detailed graphic. 🙂
This is Oppenheimer’s offering of climate modeling forced by tropical and high latitude volcanic events. Among his model runs, he models the 1257-58 event before the volcano was located and data more clearly estimated. He discusses that tropical events can influence Arctic climate for decades after the eruption and its post burping belching phase.
The GCM model he uses does not include ENSO model components. Which is a great limitation that he does not address. My thought: He should run an ENSO model (the ones used to predict short-term cycles) that are forced with aerosol decreased insolation estimates worked out with a volcanology meteorologist and see what happens to SST’s at and below the surface. With ENSO model-derived SST adjustments plus his direct radiative temperature adjustments as input, you might be able to get a coupled GCM to kick out a scenario that may suggest the decades long affects Oppenheimer alludes to.
So back to my speculation, when and where a volcano erupts is at least as important, if not more so, than where it is on the power scale. I speculate the “when and where” volcano’s potential ability to affect recharge events could be significant and able to then affect global climate for quite a while, even after the aerosols are gone. And may be the source of Oppenheimer’s suggested decades long influence.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=7&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CF0QFjAG&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnldr.library.ucar.edu%2Frepository%2Fassets%2Fosgc%2FOSGC-000-000-002-413.pdf&ei=nfiJU-yUAcW2yASpmoHoDg&usg=AFQjCNGKHaQMmo1biBxTruLeR_wu5K2CiA
Bill Inis: “Lower stratosphere temperatures appear to slowly recover over up to 25 years after a major stratospheric eruption. The idea is that Ozone is depleted by a the large eruptions and then it takes a long time for the Ozone to rebuild.”
Just fitted linear model to TLS from 1993.8 2013.8 : slope 1.6K/century
At that rate it will take over 300 years to recover the 0.5K it dropped after Pinatubo.
Like I said, I think you’re hand draw lines are rather misleading and reflect what you expect/understand (mistakenly) to be the case.
One of the official explanations is ozone but I suspect there’s more to it. Maybe other industrial pollution gets flushed out with volcanic aerosols.
That is not to say at this point that I think this current eruption will be able to spread across important equatorial ENSO areas thus reducing recharge. I only bring it up again because of this volcanic event being tropical, not because of the magnitude of this event. I think Oppenheimer would say that it has less than blip ability at this point, though we are still early in this event.
By the way, it is interesting that Oppenheimer reported that the models produced winter warming only in the extratropical model, not the tropical model. hmmmmm.
Amended to say that the larger tropical events are not followed by high latitude winter warming. Though not clear in the Oppenheimer simulation, larger (as in much larger) high latitude events also do not produce winter warming. In either case, large or small, the winter warming is short-lived, followed by winter cooling in the simulations. So I think this winter warming is a small event that has short-lived drivers compared to the longer acting cooling drivers that follow.
Bob Tisdale says onMay 31, 2014 at 1:20 am:
“Arno Arrak says: “You are quite mistaken about the lack of La Nina events between 1991 and 1994, There was a La Nina as big as life in 1993/94.”
Then he continues:
“A La Niña is characterized by a cooling of the sea surface temperatures of the eastern and central equatorial Pacific. Here’s a link to NOAA’s Oceanic NINO index. In 1993 and in 1994, the ONI NINO3.4 sea surface temperature anomalies did not even reach into negative values..”
I hate to say it, but this is just more ignorant and arrogant talk from Bob. First, you determine whether an El Nino or a La Nina exists from global temperature measures, not from sea surface temperature. The sea surface temperature can be used as an index but it is only a diagnostic tool and not a cause of anything. He is misusing SST by measuring it at Nino3.4 to determine whether a La Nina exists.That is smack in the middle of the equatorial counter-current, a good place to watch the El Nino wave go by on the way in, but no place to detect the La Nina whose reverse flow is broad and not concentrated in the counter-current that flows in the opposite direction.. An exception is forecasting El Nino from SST at Nino3.4 because it passes through that point on the way to South America. Problem with understanding ENSO is that there are too many confusing arguments out by numerous people who don’t understand the basic physics involved and are trying to set up all manner of indices based on side effects only marginally related to what ENSO is about. As an example, Bob has written a book about it but he still does not understand the basic fact that the El Nino wave emerging from the equatorial counter-current washes ashore in South America, nor does he understand that El Nino has nothing to do with global warming.
Is it erupted superwulkan? How many tons of of dust gets into the atmosphere?
================================================================
And will it delay the return of “Global Warming” as the term du jour?
Let’s see where he is currently blocked access solar energy. Please see clouds off the coast of Mexico.
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/atmosphere/radbud/gs19_prd.gif
Whether this year will once again fell snow in the desert Atacama? I think that yes.
I link to a more current article on volcanic drivers of sudden and long term cooling trends tied to eruptions. Again I find it interesting that modeled long term cooling trends are attributed to melting icebergs further south in the North Atlantic, thus cooling the incoming current into the Arctic sea, thus further inhibiting ice melt, extending its boundary, and prolonging an interglacial cold event such as the LIA in a looping feedback. However, we know that ENSO processes teleconnect with that incoming current (lagged of course). So it is plausible in my speculation that equatorial dimly recharged waters make their way to the Arctic sea already cool. Backed by the earlier work of Oppenheimer, my speculation appears to be building plausibility when tropical volcanic activity is large enough to spread an ash and sulfur veil across ENSO-important equatorial oceanic territory, diming the ability to recharge the ocean with shortwave infrared energy.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CD0QFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnldr.library.ucar.edu%2Frepository%2Fassets%2Fosgc%2FOSGC-000-000-002-060.pdf&ei=rxKKU4XLO8W2yASpmoHoDg&usg=AFQjCNHn5oCicGZycFv18cQxrTPKgzcIqg
Arno, you argue with a vast army of scientists who have laid the groundwork and have provided the information that Bob shares with us in ways not so easily accessed in the scientific journals by the general public. This isn’t Bob’s theory. It is the generally accepted theory. One that very well matches observations.
Arno Arrak (May 31, 2014 at 10:25 am) “He [Tisdale] is misusing SST by measuring it at Nino3.4 to determine whether a La Nina exists.That is smack in the middle of the equatorial counter-current, a good place to watch the El Nino wave go by on the way in, but no place to detect the La Nina whose reverse flow is broad and not concentrated in the counter-current that flows in the opposite direction..”
All the indexes (Nino 1-4 and the 850’s) pointed to weak El Nino during 1990-1995. See Fig 1: http://www.int-res.com/articles/cr2004/27/c027p051.pdf
Than low pressure enters the Gulf of Mexico.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#2014/06/05/1200Z/wind/isobaric/850hPa/orthographic=-92.73,19.65,553
@ Rudolph.A.Furtado says: May 31, 2014 at 8:34 am
I hope you have a great trip – but I’d hardly say that trekking volcanic mountains is the last unpredictable adventure on Earth. Check out the massive mudslide in Colorado: http://www.brushnewstribune.com/ci_25862990/colorado-mudslide-before-after-images-show-scale-destruction and: http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidkroll/2014/05/26/massive-mudslide-in-western-colorado-3-missing/ It’s some 2 miles wide, 4 miles long, and 250 feet deep…. When it first began with a small slide apparently, 3 men went up to see what had cut off their irrigation water supply, and they got caught in the massive mudslide that then occurred. Or try avalanches, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunami’s (just being on a beach can be a risky adventure), earthquakes, and so on. Mother nature is a terrifying and awesome thing, in many different ways, none of which tend to be terribly predictable.
@ Greg Goodman : May 31, 2014 at 1:18 am
The plot was made using a generic one metric tonne impulse to the stratosphere and then applying the e-fold rates to the SO2 conversion and the sulfate sedimentation rate. How or how much Carbolyl Sulfide (COS) is included in a volcanoes gas emission is beyond me. Tropospheric SO2 doesn’t last long, but I’ve seen some statements that COS can last as long as nine years due to it’s stability and unwillingness to react. Once COS makes it to the tropopause and migrates above it (for what ever reason or method) it can be exposed to higher energy UV light which causes it to dissociate. Once that happens it can become part of the sulfate when it reacts with H2O. How fast that happens I am clueless on. My personal opinion, is that this is the way that flood basalt events can have an effect on stratospheric aerosol formation even though they don’t have highly energetic plumes that launch the sulfur up there directly. Tolbachik is the most recent flood basalt like eruption in recent history, and it’s been going on for a bit, possibly loading the aerosol layer.
http://www.geo.mtu.edu/~raman/papers/BluthJG.pdf
Its gonna be interesting how these guys tally up the eruption’s effect on the aerosol concentration.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/strataer/
However, these guys seem to think it’s a pretty low effect. (based on models though…)
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1005976511096?LI=true#page-1
I can give Ren this hyperlink about snow in the Atacama desert:
http://strangesounds.org/2014/05/the-driest-place-in-the-world-the-atacama-desert-in-chile-was-covered-with-snow-on-may-24-2014.html
So the Atacama snow was already there on May, 24, 2014, a week before this Indonesian volcano erupted. The distance between Sangeang Api (lesser Sunda Islands) and Tambora (Sumbawa) is only 116 km. Sometimes volcanic activity stops after a few days, sometimes it increases. It is almost impossible to predict what will happen, but a repetition of the 1815 events is not [imaginary].
Arno,
Please tell us more about your definition of El Nino / La Nina. Where did you find it, or did you develop it yourself?
Anno Arrak: “…nor does he understand that El Nino has nothing to do with global warming.”
Simply to say someone else does not “understand”, is a rather arrogant “I know all so there” attitude which does not establish or even attempt to explain WHY or how they are wrong and what the right explanation is.
You have come out with some fairly silly unsupported, self proclamations of “fact” earlier so I guess I’ll have to add to my skip-comments-by list.
GeoLurking , thanks for the papers.
I’m wondering whether there will be enough of an effect and enough data to test my conclusion that volcanic aerosol forcing is AOD * 33 W/m2. This is considerably more than current modeller’s values but close to what Lacis , Hansen and Sato published in 1992 ( when they were still doing science instead of rigging climate models).
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=884
De Paus says:
May 31, 2014 at 2:02 pm
I can give Ren this hyperlink about snow in the Atacama desert:
http://strangesounds.org/2014/05/the-driest-place-in-the-world-the-atacama-desert-in-chile-was-covered-with-snow-on-may-24-2014.html
So the Atacama snow was already there on May, 24, 2014, a week before this Indonesian volcano erupted.
=====
That’s not a problem. Anything that happens up to a year before an eruption can safely be attributed as being a consequence of it.
/sarc.
Greg Goodman says:
May 31, 2014 at 9:37 am
Bill Inis: “Lower stratosphere temperatures appear to slowly recover over up to 25 years after a major stratospheric eruption. The idea is that Ozone is depleted by a the large eruptions and then it takes a long time for the Ozone to rebuild.”
Just fitted linear model to TLS from 1993.8 2013.8 : slope 1.6K/century
At that rate it will take over 300 years to recover the 0.5K it dropped after Pinatubo.
——————————————————————-
Maybe you should redo the math there. 30 years.
The lower stratosphere was as low as -0.5C around mid-1995 when the impact of Pinatubo wore off. It is now in the -0.2C range. In specific regions such as the tropics, monthly values are up into the positives – the Northern Hemisphere was positive in 2 of the last 4 months. I’m also going by what has happened in previous eruptions.
Will this volcano disrupt the stratosphere enough to cause a spike in stratospheric temperatures, followed by a downward step change as was observed in previous large eruptions? Then warmologists will claim the stratosphere is “cooling” due to increases of atmospheric CO2.
Well, it’s back.
The alarmists adjust the temperature up to compensate for the volcano.
Hello, Global Warming!
cn
Rudolph.A.Furtado you may need to make alternative trekking plans. Merapi may still have a exclusion zone around it. You can take the bus to the active Tangkuban Perahu – there’s a carpark right on the edge of the crater you can look down into the bottom of the crater without even getting out of the bus. Lusi is worth a visit. Bromo is spectacular – at dawn.
De Paus says:
I can give Ren this hyperlink about snow in the Atacama desert:
http://strangesounds.org/2014/05/the-driest-place-in-the-world-the-atacama-desert-in-chile-was-covered-with-snow-on-may-24-2014.html
Do you have eyes ?
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/70hPa/orthographic=-88.84,-50.95,365
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/atmosphere/radbud/gs19_prd.gif
Bill Innis:
Maybe you should redo the math there. 30 years.
The lower stratosphere was as low as -0.5C around mid-1995 when the impact of Pinatubo wore off. It is now in the -0.2C range. In specific regions such as the tropics, monthly values are up into the positives – the Northern Hemisphere was positive in 2 of the last 4 months. I’m also going by what has happened in previous eruptions.
=======
Oops. Thanks for catching that. It does seem more logical than a permanent down step. Climate always seems to recover in the end. BTW the trend I fitted was for tropical TLS that I’d used in my previous graphs.
But you still seem to want to take the last point on the graph and as the end of your arrow. There is, apparently random, short term variability that is about as large as the drop. Current values are at the top of that range. If you go back two years it was at a low point. Why are you using unrepresentative points to draw conclusions?
There is only one previous eruption where we had this kind of information, El Chinon. The small rise between when that settled out and when Mt P went up (only 5 or 6 years) is again mostly short term variability.
The only informative period is the long quiet one after Mt P. and the slow rise does seem to be in agreement with a slow recovery of ozone, as you suggested, or a new build of mainly chinese atmospheric pollution replacing the mainly western pollution that built up in the late 20th c.
However, it is a very slow recovery: 30 y from 1995 is 2025.
So in an odd sort of way this does seem to support recent suggestions that volcanism is a factor in “the pause”. Once that extra 2W/m2 of SW entering the lower climate system is recognised, the lack of major stratospheric events has contributed to the pause. The corollary is that it also made a significant contribution to the late 20th .c warming.
No I though I could not be that far out by eye. I’ve just checked the slope of tropical TLS from the annual peak at 1994.63 to the annual peak at 2013.63 . It’s what I originally said. :
m_lin = 0.00130434 +/- 0.005792 (444%)
c = 205.534 +/- 0.06168 (0.03001%)
383 years to recover at that rate.
Now if you want to disagree with that I suggest you do something more objective than cherry-pick the last two data points.
At the moment there are no indications of El Niño.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#2014/06/05/0300Z/wind/isobaric/850hPa/orthographic=-123.99,-12.78,553
Range of spray.
http://ozoneaq.gsfc.nasa.gov/omps/media/blog/images/OMPS_AI_indo_2014_05_31.png
Greg Goodman – very interesting stuff. It has been a pet theory of me for some time that Pinatubo’s long time effect may actually have been surface warming. The “signature” in lower stratospheric temperatures seems pretty obvious, but still the alarmists try to use it as proof of a causal link in the opposite direction!
The sudden change of temperature in the stratosphere has occurred in 2001 at the height of above 30 km.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_ALL_EQ_2001.gif
Things may be winding down. A search for VEI in Google News didn’t find anything.
From http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/06/01/mt-sangeang-api-continues-erupt.html :
“Until Sunday morning, there were reports of volcanic tremors. Volcanic activity including gas and volcanic ash had also occurred, but this is now in decline,” the province’s Regional Disaster Mitigation Agency (BPBD) head, Wedha Magma Ardhi, told The Jakarta Post in Mataram on Sunday.
He said Sangeang’s declining volcanic activity could be seen from the smoke released on Sunday, which was less thick than on previous days. People in Wera village, Wera district, could also now see the volcano’s peak, which was previously obscured by smoke.
A disaster relief team dispatched by the NTB BPBD arrived in Wera district, Bima, on Saturday morning, to distribute masks, emergency tents and ready-to-eat food to locations prepared for evacuation.
Wedha said there had been no mass evacuation as the volcano was located on Sangeang Pulo island, around 10 kilometers from Bima’s mainland. Sangeang Pulo was also uninhabited.
It is reported that around 40 farming families from Wera district use lands on Sangeang Pulo for farming.
“They were all evacuated before the volcano erupted on Friday,” said Wedha.
He said people in three districts, namely Ambalawi, Sape and Wera, the three closest areas to the volcano, still needed a supply of masks and clean water. The Social Affairs Ministry and the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) had also provided emergency assistance to those affected by the eruption.
What in the world are all of you people worried about? This is a small eruption from a relatively small volcano that historically has small eruptions ranging from VEI 1 to VEI 3. This eruption or should I say series of eruptions appear to be in line with previous historic events. So, unless this thing keeps putting up these large ash clouds every day or two for the next couple of months, we wont even notice it on a global scale.
Personally I would rather see it keep having these outbursts every other day for the next month or two. We are way over due for a really large eruption and I would much rather go ahead and get it out of the way in the relatively gentle way that this volcano has been doing, than to see an all at once VEI 7 eruption from someplace like Campi Flegrei or Long Valley. Though an event like that would be very cool to watch!
ren says:
The sudden change of temperature in the stratosphere has occurred in 2001 at the height of above 30 km.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_ALL_EQ_2001.gif
=====
Looks flakey. What is this radio sonde data ? It would be useful if you explained where some of these graphs come from. They’re not well enough labelled to be self-explanatory.
Your “Range of spray.” was interesting. Does not look like it be doing much appart from annoying aussie fliers.
Greg Goodman
Compare historical data.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_MEAN_ALL_EQ_2001.gif
When Pinatubo blew up, that is the same year we had -40 F in upstate NY in March. And four feet of snow.
It was wicked cold not all the time but when it did get cold, it was very cold. Never seen it that cold before or since.
“Compare historical data.”
So what are we looking at ?! Is this model output , “reananlysis” , radio sonde? I still have no idea what these numbers are, Do you?
My guess is that this is “reanalysis” EOF type stuff from radio-sonde. That data is notoriously sparse and irregularly sampled. Looks like a sampling irregularity to me. What’s your point?
Greg Goodman look at this. Do you understand that the temperature in the stratosphere depends on the ionization?
Is a volcano erupted in the south the Pacific? Do you really not you see?
Those are not my data, but satellite information.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/gif_files/gfs_t100_sh_f00.gif
Baronstone says:
June 1, 2014 at 5:05 am
“What in the world are all of you people worried about? This is a small eruption from a relatively small volcano that historically has small eruptions ranging from VEI 1 to VEI 3. This eruption or should I say series of eruptions appear to be in line with previous historic events. So, unless this thing keeps putting up these large ash clouds every day or two for the next couple of months, we wont even notice it on a global scale.”
It passed VEI-3 in about 2.5 hours just based on the initial vertical column height. Whether it the ability to make it to VEI-4 has yet to be seen. There was a lateral component to it during the initial phase, so that may have been the deciding factor. The initial blast was ejecting on the order of approximately 11279 m³/s DRE.
This may help in getting a handle on what the volcano was doing based on plume height.
“A multidisciplinary effort to assign realistic source parameters to models of volcanic
ash-cloud transport and dispersion during eruptions” Mastin et al (2009)
http://www.geo.mtu.edu/~raman/papers/MastinetalJVGR09.pdf
Note to my June 1, 2014 at 11:57 am.
Using VAAC alerts for the plume height input to the formulas in Mastin et al should be taken with a grain of salt. VAAC tend to over report since their goal is to keep pilots out of the ash cloud. If you do use them for your height values, only use those that are directly over the erupting vent. Do not forget to back out the edifice height or you will wind up over estimating the output rate.
ren says:
Greg Goodman look at this. Do you understand that the temperature in the stratosphere depends on the ionization?
Is a volcano erupted in the south the Pacific? Do you really not you see?
Those are not my data, but satellite information.
===
I never thought they were your data but where do you get that this is “satellite information.”?
What I see is “analysis” and I don’t see is the word “satellite”. I see what looks like a glitch in data, so before I spend too long scratching my head trying to work out which of the _many_ things affect str. temp. I want to know what I’m looking. at.
Since you don’t seem to know your self what you think I should be seeing as both ionisation and an unseen volcano, I’m rapidly losing interest.
“It passed VEI-3 in about 2.5 hours just based on the initial vertical column height. Whether it the ability to make it to VEI-4 has yet to be seen. ”
Thanks, Geo. I had not seen any VEI figures on this one yet.
Greg says:
June 1, 2014 at 1:02 pm
…
“Thanks, Geo. I had not seen any VEI figures on this one yet.”
Nor have I. This is just an estimation based on available data. For previous eruptions that I have used this method on, it generally comes out reasonably close to what the official VEI is. The Mastin paper was intended for use on volcanoes with poor monitoring. In order to get a VEI, I take the known plume heights and find the rate at that time, then use a linear regression to infill the gaps in time at a per second rate, then integrate that.
This is a crappy run based off of only two data points, but seems to indicate that it may not make VEI-4. (it also doesn’t account for the lateral blast in the early part of the eruption).
Dr Behncke works for INGV at the Etna observatory, he has this to say about Api.
“From what I understand about this eruption, it’s almost identical to the 1985 eruption, which was a VEI 3. Only that back then we didn’t have all those spectacular images in real-time, and plume heights were not as easy to determine; yet the 1985 eruption column went presumably to 15 km and that’s what it has done this time, too. So I’d rather see this as a VEI 3 (upper range) or, at best, a low VEI 4.”
Oh well, looks like it is not going to have a strong enough impact to check my dervided scaling for volcanic forcing of 33 W/m2 * AOD.
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=884
I was getting excited for moment. 🙁
“Believe it or not, before the last glacial period concluded, Japan was not settled, because of the number of seismic and volcanic eruptions.”
I think that is not correct.
Check out the Ainu.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ainu_people
GeoLurking
Such is currently circulation in the tropopause.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/intraseasonal/z200anim.gif
Nothing to do with Volcanoes, one of our ever daft Texan preachers has the answer! http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/06/01/texas-pastor-matthew-hagee-ends-global-warming-debate-video_n_5427843.html?utm_hp_ref=uk
If ENSO functions as a negative feedback, a reduction in surface forcing due to stratospheric volcanic aerosols should exacerbate the El Nino conditions rather than diminish them.
VEI 3 won’t do very much cooling.
Ulric, my thoughts: We already have clouds keeping the Sun’s rays at bay during warmer ocean surface temperatures (the winds have died down and the waters are layering just like a big ol’ bday cake and evaporating off clouds). That means we aren’t getting much extra heat from the Sun under normal El Nino conditions (relative to the clear skies of La Nina). At issue here is are the neutral conditions (such as we are presently under). Long lasting neutral conditions have the potential of eventually recharging the oceans, though a short term true La Nina can do it in half the time-or there abouts as a guess. I have yet to see any solar veil sulfur load across the equatorial Pacific. So I don’t know if this explosion will reduce any solar recharge phase be it short or long term. But it will not do much under El Nino conditions to worsen it. The clouds already there do that job.
If you look at the increase of sea ice in the south, it is seen that there has been a violent growth in 2008, at a time of very low solar minimum.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png