Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The grumbling Bali Volcano Mount Agung has not erupted yet, but experts are already talking up the dramatic short term global cooling it will cause when it blows.
Bali volcano: Here’s why the Earth will get a little cooler after Mount Agung erupts
By Alle McMahon
Something very interesting will happen when Bali’s Mount Agung finally erupts: the Earth will become a little bit cooler.
Yep. It’s not exactly what you’d expect after a volcanic eruption, which will see molten lava spewed into the air.
But don’t get too excited, it will far from reverse the effects of global warming.
Here’s why:
Global temperatures dropped last time Agung erupted
Mount Agung last erupted in 1963 after laying dormant for decades.
When it erupted, experts said global atmospheric temperatures dropped by 0.1-0.4 degrees Celsius.
That might not sound like much, but it’s quite a significant drop when you consider the last ice age occurred when global temperatures were only 5C cooler than they are now.
…
But the effect didn’t last for long
According to Professor Arculus, that sulphuric acid haze can persist in the stratosphere for a few years, but eventually the droplets will drop back to Earth.
“They’re small enough that they can stay up there for a while … but eventually they get rained out,” he said.
And that’s why the temperature drop will far from cure global warming.
…
Last time Mount Agung erupted in 1963-4 just under 2000 people died. Indonesia is taking evacuation of the region around the volcano very seriously.
Well fortunately climate models incorporate volcanic activity.
(Hey, maybe they can toss in clouds while their at it.)
Max,
They are = they’re, sounds like “their.”
OTT but it’s a very beautiful mountain!
Okay, while you peeps are going on about climate this and that, and dropping in charts and other things, maybe some of you missed something really important here.
Agung has what seems to be an approximately 100-year cycle. However in the 19th century, the volcano erupted several times, each within a few decades of the previous eruption. I don’t know if there us any real regularity to the cycle, but what we should maybe think about is a 54-year period of quiet (1963-2017), with the mountain now coming awake and rumbling. Is this the start of a mutli-decade cycle? http://www.volcanolive.com/agung.html
If so, what effect will that have on the weather (not climate) while it is going on?
Ambae, on Vanuatu, is also acting up. It seems to be more gassy than Agung, so how much will that affect things? Gassy eruptions mean SO2 aerosols ejected into the upper atmosphere. They act as sun blockers.
Are you watching the sky and noting how clear it looks? Have you compared that with days when ice fell like rain out of cirrus clouds up at 60,000 or higher, and the sky was hazy and the sun looked weak and pale?
I do these things. They are real signs of something going on. Maybe I’m the only person paying attention to all of that, but watching the sky, noting real things is just as important as charts and graphs. When the birds come back from the south on time and the snow is still so deep that there is nothing for them to eat, and i have to feed them, I make note of that. 22 pairs of Brownheaded cowbirds on my front steps in March, eating the birdfood I put out, along with mated pairs of Common Grackles and Redwing Blackbirds means that there is nothing else for them to eat. Am I the only person paying attention these things:
Speculations are fine, but without measurements of SO2 emissions and aerosols, how will we know if the cold period will last only a few months, or will it last several decades and during a solar minimum, what will that do?
And does an uptick in volcanism where it’s been low or nearly dormant until now mean that something else is afoot? And why are we seeing signs of activity in volcanoes that have been dormant for several thousand decades? This all means something and we’d better start paying attention to it, instsead of squabbling over a half-degree Celsius on a chart.
Well?
Yeah, I was just asking obvious questions, Forest, about things that seem to get lost in the shuffle of charts, graphs and snarky remarks. (I can and do make snarky remarks, too.)
You’re assuming that all volcanic eruptions are the same. They’re not. Some are plinian (explosive) like Vesuvius, where lava is ejected as pumice (a/k/a ash). They are violent and destructive. More examples are the Soufriere Hills volcano on the island of Montserrat and Pinatubo.
Others are strombolian (effusive) producing lava flows, frequently filled with gas bubbles which burst when they reach the caldera. Kilauea is an example, as is Etna. Kilauea has the capacity and gas volume in its lava to create a lava fountain, and Etna frequently throws out bombs.
Both are extremely dangerous when town are built nearby. Pompeii was destroyed by the collapse of the umbrellalike cloud of ash ejected by Vesuvius’s violent eruption, which buried the city. Santorini was another example of that kind of eruption, wiped out the Minoan civilization. The Soufriere Hills volcano has made Monserrat mostly uninhabitable.
Still think it’s funny?
Okay, Crater Lake in Oregon is the caldera of an explosive volcano (Mt. Mazama) that erupted 7,700 years ago and collapsed into its own magma chamber. Mt. Rainier’s most recent recorded volcanic eruption was between 1820 and 1854, but many eyewitnesses reported eruptive activity in 1858, 1870, 1879, 1882 and 1894 as well. It’s eroding from within. And lest we forget, the entire Long Valley caldera, which erupted 760,000 years ago, has a massive magma chamber that, like Yellowstone’s, is slowly refilling itself. It’s also an explosive volcano, as is Toba.
Geologically, these events take place about 20,000 years or so ahead of a magnetic field reversal on this planet. The last one happened 780,000 years ago. Before that, it had reversed repeatedly.
We are long overdue for it, you see. Volcanic activity has a recorded and distinct effect on the Earth’s atmosphere, so if you want to giggle over what I said, and those questions I asked, you go right ahead. I think they need to be answered.
But just so you know, the last time Vesuvius erupted was during before WWI and on into World War II.
Still think my questions are funny?
This is just the natural world.
We just have to adapt to whatever happens. Interesting to watch and observe, but really there is little that we can do apart from come along for the ride.
Hopefully, no one will be seriously injured since these days we are better at evacuating., .
Agreed. If this pending eruption does take place, it may do some real good. I sincerely hope that whatever happens on the island of Bali, the people do not suffer for it.
I wonder if they are seeing signs of natural cooling and looking for a reason to bull-splain it away?
…and there it is.
How many Climate Pseudo-Scientists who declared 2016 as the hottest years ever, will declare 2018 as one of the coolest years eva?
Hypocrisy from the radical Left, has no bounds and no shame.
How can any sane, objective person still buy into this nonsense?
That’s right, what needs to happen is that we need make judgements about what they will say about something that hasn’t happened yet and accuse them of being hypocrites about the future possible event that they will explain away with their insane arguments.
“Bali Volcano latest excuse for the lack of warming” – what a nonsensical headline for the story. Volcano erupts, cooling effect follows. If global warming is happening this will have no effect long term, there is no “excuse” involved in the story at all.
Since we know there have always been eruptions then without them the temperature would have been higher so they are comparing the situation with the cooling element and taking that as the norm and then saying ignore the cooling when we claim man made climate change.
We really need climate science to have to face proper quality assurance procedures as clearly peer review is not up to scratch if they can compare apples with all fruit and say they do not match so man is corrupting apples by genetic engineering them.
More important is that climate science needs to be removed from the grasp of ideology and returned to its real purpose, which is science.
If the weather forecasts can barely be accurate to two weeks out, how do these people expect me to believe they can do a better job forecasting something as long-term as real climate change? I think that’s a reasonable question, made more reasonable since the reality is that this ridiculous argument is driven by greed for cash and public appearances.
If anything, we need more of this silliness exposed to the light of day and more inaccuracies brought to the surface and made public. There was an article on Accuweather about a chunk of ice breaking away from Antarctic, but that has disappeared (old news) and they are now spotlighting the first seasonal snowfall in Colorado. Why weren’t they spotlighting the snow in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho earlier? This is the overdone appeal to emotion that I’m referring to, and it makes no sense that it is stirred up like this. Snow is normal for this time of year in the upper ranges in Colorado, and it’s not unusual, either in the Rockies, period. We should be glad it’s happening.
Me, I’m just glad to see something normal happening.
If these volcanic events cause cooling, especially overlaid a La Nina, then should not the Precautionary Principle be stating that we need to have 1C – 2 C warming, just as an insurance policy on chaotic event cooling? Or even regular La Nina cooling. What if Icelandic volcanoes start popping off in a few years concurrently with Bali. Seems like the global warming narrative doesn’t point out its critical beneficial effect, which is assisting the earth throughout any short span cooling events. At the end of the day, a rabid global cooling event will do far more harm to the people on Earth than slow and gradual warming which is mostly beneficial.
The volcano is smoking now. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41382990
Tony has just posted a video showing the damage Maria did to the wind and solar power in Puerto Rico:
https://realclimatescience.com/2017/09/puerto-rico-windsolar-destroyed-by-maria/#comment-66444
NOAA “Climate Prediction Center” gets in line
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.shtml
EL NIÑO/SOUTHERN OSCILLATION (ENSO)
DIAGNOSTIC DISCUSSION
issued by
CLIMATE PREDICTION CENTER/NCEP/NWS
and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society
14 September 2017
ENSO Alert System Status: La Niña Watch
Synopsis: There is an increasing chance (~55-60%) of La Niña during the Northern Hemisphere fall and winter 2017-18.
Over the last month, equatorial sea surface temperatures (SSTs) were near-to-below average across the central and eastern Pacific Ocean [Fig. 1]. ENSO-neutral conditions were apparent in the weekly fluctuation of Niño-3.4 SST index values between -0.1°C and -0.6°C [Fig. 2]. While temperature anomalies were variable at the surface, they became increasingly negative in the sub-surface ocean [Fig. 3], due to the shoaling of the thermocline across the east-central and eastern Pacific [Fig. 4]. Though remaining mostly north of the equator, convection was suppressed over the western and central Pacific Ocean and slightly enhanced near Indonesia [Fig. 5]. The low-level trade winds were stronger than average over a small region of the far western tropical Pacific Ocean, and upper-level winds were anomalously easterly over a small area of the east-central Pacific. Overall, the ocean and atmosphere system remains consistent with ENSO-neutral.
A majority of the models in the IRI/CPC suite of Niño-3.4 predictions favor ENSO-neutral through the Northern Hemisphere 2017-18 winter [Fig. 6]. However, the most recent predictions from the NCEP Climate Forecast System (CFSv2) and the North American Multi-Model Ensemble (NMME) indicate the formation of La Niña as soon as the Northern Hemisphere fall 2017 [Fig. 7]. Forecasters favor these predictions in part because of the recent cooling of surface and sub-surface temperature anomalies, and also because of the higher degree of forecast skill at this time of year. In summary, there is an increasing chance (~55-60%) of La Niña during the Northern Hemisphere fall and winter 2017-18 (click CPC/IRI consensus forecast for the chance of each outcome for each 3-month period).
This discussion is a consolidated effort of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), NOAA’s National Weather Service, and their funded institutions. Oceanic and atmospheric conditions are updated weekly on the Climate Prediction Center web site (El Niño/La Niña Current Conditions and Expert Discussions). Forecasts are also updated monthly in the Forecast Forum of CPC’s Climate Diagnostics Bulletin. Additional perspectives and analysis are also available in an ENSO blog. The next ENSO Diagnostics Discussion is scheduled for 12 October 2017 . To receive an e-mail notification when the monthly ENSO Diagnostic Discussions are released, please send an e-mail message to: ncep.list.enso-update@noaa.gov.
Climate Prediction Center
National Centers for Environmental Prediction
NOAA/National Weather Service
A strong geomagnetic storm may accelerate the volcanic eruption in Bali. Observations indicate an increase in lava levels in volcanoes during geomagnetic storms. For example, in the Kilauea volcano.
https://www.facebook.com/Sunclimate-719393721599910/
The latest news on Bali is that 134,000 people have evacuated to safe places. Agung is showing stronger and stronger signs of the eruption. Likewise, Ambae on Vanuatu is showing stronger signs of eruption and 11,000 people have evacuated from it vicinity.
uk/news/world/859280/Bali-volcano-update-Mount-Agung-eruption-latest-seismic-graphs-news-maps-warnings-live
I’m thinking that since they are both very large volcanoes with high yields, they may erupt within a short time of each other. If the eruptions have a high enough volume of gas and ash (pumice), and the gas cloud travels high enough to reach the upper atmosphere, it will have a specific effect on the current climate.