15-1
Volcanoes & Climate
Volcanic Activity
Effect on Climate
Science Concepts
SO2 Effect
Mt. Pinatubo
The Earth System (Kump, Kastin & Crane)
•
Chap. 15 (pp. 299-302)
Climate and Global Change Notes
15-2
The Earth’s Climate System
Physical Climate Systems
Climate
Change
Stratospheric
Chemistry/Dynamics
Sun
Volcanoes
Ocean
Dynamics
Terrestrial
Energy/Moisture
Global Moisture
Marine/
Biogeochemistry
Soil
Terrestrial
Ecosystems
Tropospheric Chemistry
Biogeochemical Systems
Human
Activities
CO2
Human Forcing
External Forcing
Atmospheric Physics/Dynamics
Land
Use
CO2
Pollutants
Climate and Global Change Notes
15-3
Volcanoes & Climate
Ben Franklin Observation
•
Benjamin Franklin was serving the United States as an ambassador to France
and living in Paris when Laki volcano in Iceland erupted
During several of the summer months of the year 1783, when the effect of the
sun’s rays to heat the earth in these northern regions should have been greatest,
there existed a constant fog over all Europe, and great part of North America. This
fog was of a permanent nature; it was dry, and the rays of the sun seemed to have
little effect towards dissipating it, as they easily do a moist fog, arising from water.
They were indeed rendered so faint in passing through it, that when collected in the
focus of a burning glass, they would scarce kindle brown paper. Of course, their
summer effect in heating the earth was exceedingly diminished.
Hence the earth was early frozen,
Hence the first snows remained on it unmelted, and received continual
additions.
Hence the air was more chilled, and the winds more severely cold.
Hence perhaps the winter of 1783-4, was more severe, than any that had
happened for many years.
Climate and Global Change Notes
15-4
Volcanoes & Climate
Ben Franklin Observation (Con’t)
The cause of this universal fog is not yet ascertained. Whether it was
adventitious to this earth, and merely a smoke, proceeding from the consumption
by fire of some of those great burning balls or globes which we happen to meet
within our rapid course round the sun, and which are sometimes seen to kindle and
be destroyed in passing our atmosphere, and whose smoke might be attracted and
retained by our earth; or whether it was the vast quantity of smoke, long continuing
to issue during the summer from Hecla in Iceland, and that other volcano which
arose out of the sea near that island, which smoke might be spread by various
winds, over the northern part of the world, is yet uncertain.
Franklin, B., Meteorological imaginations and conjectures, Manchester
Literary and Philosophical Society Memoirs and Proceedings, 2, 122,
1784. [Reprinted in Weatherwise, 35, p. 262, 1982.]
Climate and Global Change Notes
15-5
Volcanoes & Climate
•
National Public Radio story - “How a Volcano Eruption Wiped Away Summer”
by Michael Sullivan 10/22/07
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15448607
“Darkness” By Lord Byron
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings—the huts,. . .
•
•
Written summer of 1816 when Percy Bysshe Shelley, his wife Mary
Wollstonecraft Shelley (wrote novel “Frankenstein”), and their friend Lord Byron
went to Lake Geneva, Switzerland for their summer holiday.
Tambora in Indonesia erupted in 1815 and produced the “Year Without a
Summer” (1816)
Climate and Global Change Notes
15-6
Volcanoes & Climate
1960-1995 Volcanic Activity
•
Red triangles indicate volcanoes
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a000100/a000155/index.html
Climate and Global Change Notes
15-7
Volcanoes & Climate
Volcanic Global Cooling
•
•
•
•
Volcanoes eject sulfur dioxide (SO2) and other gases during eruptions
SO2 combines and H2O in the stratosphere to form fine droplets or “aerosols”
of sulfuric acid (H2SO4) that form a haze
Haze increases the atmospheric albedo, thus reducing the solar energy
reaching the Earth’s
surface
Example:
Mt Tambora in
Indonesia (1815)
1816 - Year without
a summer
June snows; frost
in July and August
in the northeast
New England
temperatures cooler
than normal; 2-4°C
in July; 1-2°C in
August
http://www-sage3.larc.nasa.gov/solar/learning-aerosol.html
Caused 80% reduction in harvest
Climate and Global Change Notes
15-8
Volcanoes & Climate
Tree-Ring Width Vs Year of Eruption
•
Growth index for the 24
largest volcanoes
Temperature Vs Year of Eruption
•
Composite global surface
temperature change near
the time of the five
volcanoes producing the
greatest optical depths
since 1880:
Krakatau (1883),
Santa Maria (1902), Agung (1963),
El Chichon (1982) and Pinatubo (1991)
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/intro/hansen_02/
Climate and Global Change Notes
15-9
Volcanoes & Climate
Estimated Effects of Volcanoes
Volcano
St. Helens
Agung
El Chichon
Krakatau
Tambora
Toba
Laki
Roza
Latitude
46°N
8°S
17°N
6°S
8°S
3°N
64°N
47°N
Date
1980
1963
1982
1883
1815
7,000 B.P.
1783-84
4,000 B.P.
DT (°C)
<0.1
<0.05
<0.4
0.3
0.5
large?
1.0?
large?
Climate and Global Change Notes
15-10
Mt. Pinatubo
Erupted 9 June 1991 After Several
Hundred Years of Inactivity
•
Description
Location: Philippines
Latitude: 15.13 N, Longitude: 120.35 E
Height: 1,745 meters before June 15, 1991 eruption
http://vulcan.wr.usgs.g
ov/Volcanoes/
Philippines/Pinatubo/
images.html
-
Height: 1,485 meters (high point caldera rim) after
eruption
Second in size to eruption of Katmai, Alaska (1912)
Ten times larger than Mt St. Helens eruption in 1980
Ash cloud rose 30- 35 km into the sky
http://www.volcano.si.edu/gvp/usgs/maps.cfm#philippines
Climate and Global Change Notes
15-11
Mt. Pinatubo
Mt. Pintatubo Eruption - June
1991
http://hannover.park.org/Philippines/pinatubo/
http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/Philippines/Pinatubo/images.html
Climate and Global Change Notes
15-12
Mt. Pinatubo
Mt. Pintatubo Ash at Clark
Air Force Base
QuickTime™ and a
GIF decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Spread of Mt. Pintatubo
Ash and Gases
http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/
Philippines/Pinatubo/images.html
Climate and Global Change Notes
15-13
Mt. Pinatubo
Nimbus-7 Sulfur Dioxide
June 17
June 19
http://eospso.gsfc.nasa.gov/eos_edu.pack/p35.html
Climate and Global Change Notes
15-14
Mt. Pinatubo
Nimbus-7
Sulfur
Dioxide
June 16
June 19
June 22
June 25
Climate and Global Change Notes
15-15
Mt. Pinatubo
SAGE II 1020 m
Stratospheric Optical Depth
15 Apr25 May 1991
14 Jun26 Jul 1991
13 Feb26 Mar 1993
http://www-sage2.larc.nasa.gov/introduction/
Climate and Global Change Notes
15-16
Volcanoes & Climate
Volcanic Eruptions
•
Atmospheric
SO2 detected
by TOMS per
volcano
since 1979
http://rst.gsfc.nasa.gov/Sect16/Sect16_2.html
Climate and Global Change Notes
15-17
Volcanoes & Climate
SAGE II
1020 m
Stratospheric
Optical
Depth
http://www-sage2.larc.nasa.gov/introduction/
Climate and Global Change Notes