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:-
Bob Tisdale says:
May 30, 2014 at 5:29 pm
I hate volcanos. They muddy the water in more ways than one.
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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.