Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research claims that global warming will impede the ability of volcanoes to push sulphur compounds into the stratosphere, which will in turn reduce the cooling effect of volcanic eruptions.
Climate change may prevent volcanoes from cooling the planet
…
When an eruption is powerful enough, volcanoes spew sulfur gasses high into the atmosphere, reaching a layer called the stratosphere, about 10 to 15 kilometres above Earth’s surface. Here, gasses react with water to form aerosol particles that linger in the stratosphere for one or two years, reflecting sunlight and heat from the sun, and cooling the planet. On average, there are anywhere from three to five eruptions that reach the stratosphere every year.
Previous research has shown that as the planet warms, the lower layers of the atmosphere will expand, making it much harder for the gasses to reach the stratosphere. At lower levels, in the troposphere, the gasses quickly get turned into aerosols and clouds and precipitate back down to earth as rain or snow.
“Volcanic eruptions tend to counteract global warming but as the planet heats up and our atmosphere changes, we’ve found that fewer eruptions will be able to reflect the sun’s radiation,” said Thomas Aubry, a PhD student studying climate and volcanoes. “It will be harder for the volcanic gasses to reach high enough into atmosphere to help cool the planet.”
…
Read more: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161116114217.htm
The abstract of the study;
Impact of global warming on the rise of volcanic plumes and implications for future volcanic aerosol forcing
Authors
Thomas J. Aubry ,A. Mark Jellinek, Wim Degruyter, Costanza Bonadonna, Valentina Radić, Margot Clyne, Adjoa Quainoo
Volcanic eruptions have a significant impact on climate when they inject sulfur gases into the stratosphere. The dynamics of eruption plumes is also affected by climate itself, as atmospheric stratification impacts plumes height. We use an integral plume model to assess changes in volcanic plume maximum rise heights as a consequence of global warming, with atmospheric conditions from an ensemble of global climate models (GCM), using three representative concentration pathways (RCP) scenarios. Predicted changes in atmospheric temperature profiles decrease the heights of tropospheric and lowermost stratospheric volcanic plumes and increase the tropopause height, for the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios in the coming three centuries. Consequently, the critical mass eruption rate required to cross the tropopause increases by up to a factor 3 for tropical regions, and up to 2 for high-latitude regions. A number of recent lower stratospheric plumes, mostly in the tropics (e.g., Merapi, 2010), would be expected to not cross the tropopause starting from the late 21st century, under RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenario. This effect could result in a ≃5 − 25% decrease in the average SO2 flux into the stratosphere carried by small plumes, which frequency is larger than the rate of decay of volcanic stratospheric aerosol, and a ≃2 − 12% decrease of the total flux. Our results suggest the existence of a positive feedback between climate and volcanic aerosol forcing. Such feedback may have minor implications for global warming rate but can prove to be important to understand the long-term evolution of volcanic atmospheric inputs.
Read more (paywalled): http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016JD025405/full
I don’t have access to the full study, but the obvious question – why did the researchers base their study on a model?
Why not send a few weather balloons through volcanic plumes at different latitudes and different times of year, to actually measure the impact of different atmospheric conditions on the formation of volcanic stratospheric aerosols?
The atmosphere is much thicker at the equator than at the poles – the troposphere is only around 4 miles thick at the poles during winter, but reaches 12 miles thick in equatorial regions.
So what do we do? Fill all of the volcanoes full of cement?
DOY YOU REALIZE just how much CO2 all of that concrete would generate!?!
….someone Please tell me where that extra ‘Y’ came from.
Walmart
Obviously it came from You. You put so much emphasis on You you started it twice.
Your keyboard stammers.
Computer model. They are notorious for it. 🙂
It’s a zero sum game, it offsets the CO2 that the volcano produces. I suggest that we put the authors of the article on top of the volcanic plug to monitor its status. We should also give them a flag to plant on Mars when the volcano decides that it does not like that plug.
“….someone Please tell me where that extra ‘Y’ came from.”
It’s called dysphasia, you are probably mildly dyslexic too. 😉
doy is pop culture speak for duh!
You just missed the ! out.
Well it didn’t come from France Otter, otherwise it would be an extra Z instead.
g
A new study has found that as concrete ages, it reabsorbs most of the CO2 that was released in making it.
Well don’t worry about the volcanoes Tommy, those things will blast through anything they set their little hearts desire to.
And the microbes that survive the blasts that no longer happen, will make rain drops for us, so we don’t need any aerosols.
And I didn’t need any computer to figure that out.
If that is what you are planning to earn your living on Tommy, you are going to starve to death.
G
As an experiment lets have a nice VE-7 eruption and monitor the results..
“But the models-oh the horror!!…”
I don’t even know where to begin on this one….. if convection in a thunderstorm can break through to the Stratosphere I can’t see why a much more powerful event like an eruption would have much trouble.
A warmer climate means more convection and you would think that would aid in pushing stuff higher in the atmosphere.
Convection is caused by temperature DIFFERENCE not total temperature. Density differences between cool liquid and warmer liquid cause convection. A mere 1°C temperature change in the surrounding atmosphere won’t have much of an effect considering the volcanic plume is still greater than 400°C.
rocketscientist — that doesn’t really follow. First off, the temperature differentials get larger as temperature rises, because space (where all the heat eventually goes) is a few degrees above absolute zero. Second, the temperature of the plume isn’t relevant to the question of how the plume ejecta gets circulated by the rest of the atmosphere (which is immensely larger) after cooling and joining the rest of the atmosphere.
TallDave, there is another force acting, gravity, which also greatly effects atmospheric density. Because air is compressible the density is greatly effected by the weight of the column above it. This gravitational gradient becomes a much greater effect as it effects heat transfer. You also seem to be confusing radiant heat transfer (to outer space) with conductive heat transfer caused by two contacting substances.
I agree. Would not a warmer atmosphere be less dence and allow for easier penetration of the explosion? Help me out here. We all know a baseball goes farther on a warm day than a cold day. And basing the results on a model which assumes a hot spot, which would act as an invesion layer… I thought the hot spot was debunked. Please help and tell me where I am wrong here!
This is the kind of inane drivel that Journal of Geophysical Research has made its hallmark over the years. Recall Mickey Mann in the climategate emails saying they must not lose over JGR.
How much higher do they expect the tropopause to get ? Out of reach to a VEI 5 ? Come on!
Junk science yet again. And this is the kind of stupid crap that Trump is supposed to accept without question and not “deny climate science” according to DeGrasse Tyson.
oops : ” … must not lose CONTROL over JGR.”
“Junk science yet again.”
Yup.
Assuming that gravity doesn’t increase with global warming (yet) the plumes will rise proportionally as high as they did before. Buoyancy and density still behave the same.
Well,of course it’s models all the way down.What we have is a mass of PhDs with nowhere to go.Study: why Alsatian mice grow bigger than rats.
65% of ALL US University PhD graduates in Physics, will never ever get a paying job working in their specialty. They are doomed to become post doc. fellows at some institution or other, and swill at the public trough (mostly).
Climate seems to be their line of least resistance in that the 30 years it takes to observe any climate effect results, is all you need to get to a taxpayer pensioned retirement point.
G
As I previously opined, climate-related PhD’s will will become “a dime a dozen” if President The Donald follows through on his commitments. Federal government grants fund many post-doc positions. Like Clinton supporters, they were told the money would flow forever.
I’m sorry, but as someone who once trained in earth sciences, this just has to go down as so much horse-sh** on a volcanic scale. The very idea that the incredibly powerful effusions of a significant volcano will be damped down by a few extra CO2 and similar molecules (on a parts per million scale!) in the troposphere is beyond stupid. Back to class, pack to primary school science even.
I think what they’re saying is that, since the tropopause would be higher with CAGW, then the volcano would need to shoot the plume higher. So, it’s not damping the volcano, it’s just moving the target higher.
The main problem with this logic is that there have not been any major stratospheric volcanoes since 1991 yet global warming has SLOWED dramatically in that time.
Looks like they have major problems with amount of impact volcanoes have in the first place.
No wonder that the americain people and those they elect has heard enough of this kind on inane BS and not longer listen.
Ian Magness.
You did not read the study. If you are trained in Earth Sciences, read the study and then update your comment accordingly.
Why not just ‘model’ the study? Which actually gives their research more validity than they deserve.
Confirmation bias! Lots of assumptions, based on assumptions.
?dl=0
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High School quality research.
Unless they published all their models, and all the biased assumptions going into the models, then it’s not possible to critique their model with only this article in hand.
Just assume every model is full of biased assumptions unless shown otherwise. I don’t think one will go too far wrong working from that premise.
Agreed Harry. In this particular case, however, my point is that the proposition is SO absurd that it’s not worth the paper that it’s written on. The scales involved are the key. We are led to believe that a few extra molecules of GHGs on a parts per million scale can cause such physical and chemical changes to the structure of the atmosphere globally that the extremely powerful, violent and localised effects of a volcanic plume that leaves the ground at pressures and temperatures of many orders of magnitude greater than the ambient conditions, will be significantly influenced in behaviour. It’s like saying a human being can go up to a burning building, climb a crane until he or she is over the top of it, take a deep breath and then blow the rising smoke plume back down again. Sorry, I just don’t buy it!
Ian Magness.
The study does not say the effect is because of CO2, it says it is because of global warming raising the average level of the tropopause. Your comment shows you did not read the paper.
“reflecting sunlight and heat from the sun”! What a joker this student is.
Wearing my pedantic hat for a moment. We get neither light nor heat from the sun.
We do get copious supplies of electromagnetic radiation energy (photons).
Some of them (less than one octave ) create the sensation we call “light” in our brains.
Much of the rest dissolves in the deep oceans, and is eventually captured by some non-radiative process, leading to conversion to waste heat, which is just the random vibration energy of atoms and molecules, and maybe some rotational energy too.
If you connect the sun to the earth with a type IIa diamond thermally conductive rod, (a) it will melt and evaporate, but even if it didn’t, the maximum amount of heat it would conduct from the sun, is in the microwatt per meter squared region. I worked it out once, and just ignored the evaporation of the rod.
You can do the same. I’m sure you can giggle up the thermal conductivity of type IIa diamond. I almost forgot, that type IIa diamond only has a spectacular thermal conductivity at a Temperature of about 100 K.
Well even copper would evaporate. It’s darn near impossible to conduct heat from the sun to the earth, and the tiny amount of convection we get is almost un-measurable.
g
and we see again, a legion of authors. Safety in numbers innit? If one of them in that group had any sort of doubt about this work, they’d be instantly shouted down by the rest. Science by consensus from a group of guilt ridden depressives.
Hint: Lay off the carbs folks, wake up and stop making asrehloes of yourselves.
Then this word ‘spew’ comes up yet again, with all its (less than) scientific connotations. sigh
Sorry peeps but volcanoes are actually very lovely things – if you’re a plant. Any plant.
OK, I may endlessly say ‘Don’t eat plants, they’ll make you fat & stupid’ but ‘we’ really do need them and they need volcanoes.
Admittedly, a volcano is pretty disruptive in its immediate vicinity (for a short time geologically) and won’t be available at Walmart any time soon (that’s tempting so much fate, sorry) but, they are veritable fountains of ambrosia for plants.
All that sulphur, carbon dioxide, bits of soluble nitrogen mixed in and spread around is all very useful but mostly, its all that lovely fresh rock and dust bringing the myriad of trace elements plants need.
We say round here “Oh look at the Sahel going green with extra CO2”
I don’t buy that, adding just CO2 and/or water to a desert will not make it bloom.
Trigger a few volcanoes across the Sahara and within a century it’ll be an impenetrable rainforest. Again
BUT the Sahara WAS green for several thousand years during the Holocene climate optimum because of a stronger African Monsoon thanks to a 2°C warmer global climate then – and that without much volcanoes “across the Sahara”…
A warmer climate is enough to make the Sahara desert green again!
By the way: The greening of the Sahara has started already:
https://www.mpg.de/10645369/sahel-zone-precipitation-mediterranean
And here is more to read about “Green Sahara Periods” (and their implications) thanks to warmer than today climate conditions in the past:
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/48/20159
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2997337?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/313/5788/803
http://www.pnas.org/content/108/2/458.abstract
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0076514
The idea behind multiple authors is that each of them can claim deniability as far as being blamed for anything said in the paper.
“Oh it was one of the other co-authors who said that.”
Not on my watch you don’t. If you attach YOUR name to it, you are equally responsible for everything the paper claims.
G
Just some layman’s questions but ….
if ‘global warming’ is so nefariously good (as their theories/models claim) at preventing cooling mechanisms, then:
a) why is recent geological history so full of ice ages ?
b) why is this still a pretty green planet instead of a heat-blasted desert world ?
Just curious – unless of course, there’s more hot air than actual evidence in effect (pun very much intended)
In spite of alarmist hand waving and shrieks of disaster:
Most recent pictures of temperature reconstructions, someone pastes in recent temperatures pretending that recent temperatures and temperature reconstructions are identical. A technique that is more related to inking moustaches onto pictures of other people.
http://hot-topic.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/GISP210klarge.png
ensemble of global climate models (GCM)! Says it all really! The very idea that a ppm of CO2, o.o4% ofthe atmosphere, can control a powerful volcanic eruption is ridiculous! These bozos & their colleagues trying to scare us about the volcanic desruction impending to wipe out America need to do some joined up thinking!
Isn’t 4ppm 0.0004%?
http://www.rapidtables.com/convert/number/PPM_to_Percent.htm
400 ppm is 0.04% or 0.0004 (decimal fraction). I’ve done the math many times…..
Ian M
So, yes you are correct.
Ian M
Climate Change Catastrophism: one bozo eruption after another.
Bozo eruption.
Great line.
If volcanic cooling is impeded by global warming, then what was professed on an episode of the newer series of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (2014) is flawed.
Neil deGrasse-Tyson (that name again) narrated the series, where during an episode it was promoted that a vast area of Siberia became volcanic and spewed out huge amounts of CO2 (poisonous gas to Green Leftards), overheated the atmosphere and killed all the dinosaurs.
If the Siberia hypothesis was correct, we’d still be in a runaway greenhouse, likewise for the “volcanic cooling impeded by global warming”.
So to deGrasse-Tyson and all the other self-professed poindexters – WHERE THE HELL IS MY RUNAWAY GREENHOUSE??
Did the oceans ate your homework yet again?
wow isnt the desperation showing?
whatta load
“For the comimg THREE CENTURIES” !!!
BOY, are these guys making one stupid-ass assumption. They really think that man’s greenhouse emisssions will continue for three centuries?
I pray this it may, and for many more after that as well.
So the trick is: no matter how much cooling there is from the next major eruption, alarmists will claim: “there would have been more if not for ‘global warming'”.
YCMTSU
That’s what they’re working up to. When the planet doesn’t melt over the next ten years the claim will be “All the mitigation mechanisms we put in place have worked, we must continue”.
In a way, one must admire the authors’ persistence. No matter what the issue, they find a way to twist it to make “climate change” more dangerous and terrible, especially the CO2 stuff from human causes. So many here have pointed out the dependence upon models rather than data; I concur.
In the theory, the levels of the troposphere and the stratosphere, the levels where temperature is 255K before and after global warming, only move by about 400 or 500 metres up or down. Its not like things change that drastically. Its just minor changes, so I imagine volcanic sulphates are not going to be blocked.
If the atmosphere has expanded then other gases must have gone higher so why wouldn’t CO2?
SO2
There is no science or hard data here – just magical invocations. Because the wizard says that’s how it is, that’s how it must be – until someone wiser says different.
the progressive “adjusted” scientific method at work.
My first reaction to this was the use of the phrase “a layer called the stratosphere, about 10 to 15 kilometres above Earth’s surface.”
Even ignorant non-scientists like me have heard of the stratosphere and have a pretty rough idea where it is, which suggests to me that this paper is not meant for scientists but for lay people, most likely enviro-activists. Which also suggests to me that it is likely to be very short on verifiable facts (or may lack them altogether) and is simply more warmist propaganda.
D- Really must try harder!
Whatever induces “action” from the climate ninnies are the words that are chosen.
“Here, gasses react with water to form aerosol particles that linger in the stratosphere for one or two years”
So what is it, one or two years?
“Predicted changes in atmospheric temperature”
Based on what? Hockey stick perhaps? Computer projections? Or perhaps empirical satellite data? I’m sure it’s defined in the paper……..ahem.
“Our results suggest the existence of a positive feedback between climate and volcanic aerosol forcing.”
Ah! it’s a suggestion, so not really science.
“Such feedback may have minor implications for global warming rate but can prove to be important to understand the long-term evolution of volcanic atmospheric inputs.”
MAY have MINOR implications for global warming…………but can PROVE to be important to understand the long-term evolution of volcanic atmospheric inputs. What is being studied here, precisely? Do we understand volcano’s well enough to start predicting their impact on a phenomenon we know we don’t understand well in the first place.
Can we give this Phd student back his crayons and keep him away from computers, please. I trust the full paper is considerably more conclusive than this rubbish. I wouldn’t have accepted a report like this from a probationary police officer far less an academic of any description.
Isn’t science supposed to prove things beyond reasonable doubt, based on the observed evidence to hand, at the time?
Accepted criminal law (at least in the UK) would not accept any of this nonsense as sufficient (not even close) evidence to convict anyone of anything, yet the future of mankind is reliant on this and other such rubbish. The complete paper may be credible but no one should be bothered to read it based on this appalling abstract.
It’s like newspaper headlines – very often designed to grab by the eyeballs and leave a lasting (political) impression in the readers’ minds regardless of the actual content of the story itself.
Sadly, it’s real science that’ll pay for sensationalist science. In turn, it’ll be the public that suffers when people understand they have been conned.
Actually, science isn’t supposed to be used to “prove” anything. At least that is what I was taught way back in my General Science course. You have to have years and years of data for a hypothesis to become a theory. One example of not using science to “prove” is superconductivity (certain substances as very low temperatures do not resist electricity). One of the results of superconductivity is that there is a certain temperature (approximately -400 degrees Fahrenheit) above which it is impossible. Everyone thought that was it, for a long time. Until someone showed you could have superconductivity at -321 degrees Fahrenheit.
All science is tentative. As my children say (in their most motherly mocking voice), “All you need is one counter-example…”
Yep, so far, all of Newtons laws work. But, if we find a situation where they don’t, we either have to modify the theory, or figure out new ones…
While we’re on the subject, there are some questions I’ve been pondering recently, and I’d be interested in comments . . .
Several contributers have recently posted a chart of stratospheric temps over the satellite era, including the Pinatubo & El Chinchon eruptions. In both cases there was an immediate warming of the stratosphere, followed by a cooling 2-3 years later. And in each case the cooling left temps at a lower level than before the eruption (ie a ‘step cooling’).
I have also read that not all volcanoes/eruptions are the same, and that stratosperic temps and tropospheric temps may be inversely correlated.
So my questions are:
1) Do (some) volcanic eruptions lead to short term warming of the s/sphere,
but a longer-term cooling?
2) Does this imply a short-term cooling of the troposphere, but a longer-term
warming?
3) Is this true of all eruptions, or just some types?
4) Does it matter WHERE the eruption occurs (upper atmospheric air currents/
ozone effects etc)?
5) Does this mean that our bland assumption of ‘volcanoes cool’ is wrong?
6) What does this mean for atmospheric theory & models?
Sorry, bit long, but I’m fascinated . . . CC
Someone got l funding by writing a research proposal promising to link runaway global warming with volanoes and destroy the sulfate paradigm in the process. Eh voila, models primed and away we go. Next research proposal in the bag (perhaps? – do you hear a trump-et call?)
Kept the tax payers money coming: Maybe I could get a government grant modeling why little boys get dirtier than little girls.
A possibly dubious premise.
http://i1.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article7429472.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/Girl-playing-in-mud.jpg
Happiness Is….
There you go, injecting reality into stuff. Only models count you know…
I can imagine that the life expectancy of a weather balloon in the superheated core of the plume is ~8 seconds. slightly longer for the instrument package.
But not to worry. We all know that CO2 causes more volcanoes, so the lesser effect of each one will be offset by the greater number of them.
“why did the researchers base their study on a model?”
They are likely using a lot of data from weather balloons and real measurements from volcanos and plumes already, then build a computer program (a “model”) to run a simulation of how the outcome would be if the global climate was warmer. Simulations like this are usually done to predict future events that cannot be measured directly. In this case because the climate is not warm enough yet to directly measure how plumes would react in a warmer global climate. Still, the simulations themselves must be based on real observations and measurements to make them as accurate as possible, and to be able to simulate how plumes move at all.
I’m not saying they cannot be wrong, all predictions can be wrong. But I don’t see a problem with using computer models/programs, based on real data and observations, to help us predict the future. In fact, I think it would be impossible to do without it, because smoke/fluid simulations is not something you can do by hand.
Because the computer model has assumptions built in. If any of those assumptions are wrong, so is the predicition. To date, most climate predictions have been wrong, so there is a problem.
I ask people: If you had a doctor who did an exam and then fed the information into a model and the model said you were going to die is six months, would you quit your job and live it up knowing with certainty you’d be dead in six months, stopping all medical checkups because the model says you will die and it’s based on real-world data? If you had a doctor who did an exam, said that your illness generally kills in six months but recommended further testing and actual monthly examinations to watch for real world changes and ways to deal with your illness, would you do the monthly exams and see how things went? Would you believe a model if your life depended on that model?
Predictions are, on the whole, wrong unless they deal with a very small number of variables. Note the predictions of presidential elections. Chaos cannot be predicted.
“Chaos cannot be predicted”
Or that’s how it used to be at any rate because if you had a model which could predict the stock market you would soon own all of the money in the World. I must have missed the seminal paper demonstrating that this is no longer the case and chaos is indeed now trivially predictable. Usually when I bring this up with believers I receive patronising sneers by way of answer – but never any actual answers. Funny that.
“Chaos cannot be predicted”
Overly simplistic
While chaos means that you can’t predict the motion of a single molecule, with a large enough volume you get both the gas laws and thermodynamics.
Chaos means that you can’t predict where each cloud will be tomorrow, but you can predict that tomorrow will be cloudier than today.
Hannes,
“In fact, I think it would be impossible to do without it, because smoke/fluid simulations is not something you can do by hand.”
Then it ain’t science, to me . . Only that which can be confirmed in reality-land (otherwise known as the time-space continuum) is rightly spoken of as science. (Using computers or wearing pocket protectors don’t cut it, with me anyway ; )
““It will be harder for the volcanic gasses to reach high enough into atmosphere to help cool the planet.””
Thank the heavens for that!
To the authors of this THEORY I say, produce the data! I don’t mean the the massaged, or corrected, or computer generated, or what ever data. I may not be able to discern the validity of the data, however, between the presenters and certain commenters I get educated.