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:-
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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.