Can volcanic super eruptions lead to major cooling? Study suggests no

The research came up with ‘relatively modest temperature changes’. One NASA atmospheric scientist commented: “To me, this is another example of why geoengineering via stratospheric aerosol injection is a long, long way from being a viable option.” (Here’s another one). Climate alarmists can imagine doing some things, but so can Hollywood scriptwriters.
– – –
New research suggests that sunlight-blocking particles from an extreme eruption would not cool surface temperatures on Earth as severely as previously estimated, says Phys.org.

Some 74,000 years ago, the Toba volcano in Indonesia exploded with a force 1,000 times more powerful than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. The mystery is what happened after that—namely, to what degree that extreme explosion might have cooled global temperatures.

When it comes to the most powerful volcanoes, researchers have long speculated how post-eruption global cooling—sometimes called volcanic winter—could potentially pose a threat to humanity.

Why atmospheric geoengineering is dead in the water

Another idea for slaying imaginary climate dragons runs into trouble, as new research finds ‘an intervention that cools the air would not be able to cool the deep ocean on the same timescale’. So for believers in a climate crisis the desired short-term effectiveness just isn’t there.
– – –
Climate change is heating the oceans, altering currents and circulation patterns responsible for regulating climate on a global scale [Talkshop comment – empty assertions]. If temperatures dropped, some of that damage could theoretically [sic] be undone.

But employing “emergency” atmospheric geoengineering later this century in the face of continuous high carbon emissions would not be able to reverse changes to ocean currents, a new study finds.

This would critically curtail the intervention’s potential effectiveness on human-relevant timescales.

Oceans, especially the deep oceans, absorb and lose heat more slowly than the atmosphere, so an intervention that cools the air would not be able to cool the deep ocean on the same timescale, the authors found.

Is Iceland entering a new volcanic era?

Scientists think there’s some evidence of a centuries-long periodic pattern or cycle, but aren’t sure what it is or what determines the length of it. The graphic shows the most recent two of the five marked phases are west of the earlier ones, plus some apparent north-east to south-west alignments, but otherwise it’s open to intepretation.
– – –
This week, Iceland woke up to yet another day of fire, as towering fountains of lava lit up the dark morning sky, says BBC News.

This time the evacuated town of Grindavik was spared, but the molten rock still wrought havoc – engulfing a pipe that provides heat and hot water to thousands living in the area and cutting off a road to the Blue Lagoon tourist attraction.

It is the third short-lived eruption on the Reykjanes peninsula since December 2023 and the sixth since 2021. But scientists think this is just the start of a period of volcanic activity that could last for decades or even centuries.

So what is going on?

‘Time’s finally up’: Impending Iceland eruption is part of centuries-long volcanic pulse

Lava fields of the Reykjanes Peninsula [image credit: Vincent van Zeijst @ Wikipedia]

The headline obviously raises the question of the origin of such a pulse and of its suggested frequency. On the other hand a damp squib (from a spectator point of view) can’t be ruled out entirely at this stage, although some of the cracks already appearing on the surface do look quite large and other signs are ominous.
– – –
Iceland’s potentially imminent eruption in the Reykjanes Peninsula is part of a 1,000-year cycle of volcanic activity that will likely cause eruptions for centuries, scientists say.

“Time’s finally up,” Edward W. Marshall, a researcher at the University of Iceland’s Nordic Volcanological Center, told LiveScience in an email. “We can get ready for another few hundred years of eruptions on the Reykjanes.”

Seismic activity began increasing in the south of the peninsula in October, with hundreds of earthquakes recorded there each day. On Nov. 10, authorities evacuated the town of Grindavík, with experts warning a volcanic eruption could take place in just days.

Supercomputer climate model absurdity: ‘extreme global warming could eventually wipe out humans’

The illogical conclusion of tail-wagging-dog climate theories fed into models based on them, with a side order of volcanoes. In any case a lot happened to Earth in the last 250 million years, including periods when CO2 was much higher than today – so whatever comes out of a supercomputer, natural evolution will continue.
– – –
Extreme global warming will likely wipe all mammals – including humans – off the face of the Earth in 250 million years, according to a new scientific study. Sky News reporting.

Temperatures could spiral to 70C (158F) and transform the planet into a “hostile environment devoid of food and water”, the research warns.

The planet would heat up to such an extent that many mammals would be unable to survive – and the Earth’s continents would merge to form one hot, dry, uninhabitable supercontinent.

The apocalyptic projections are from the first-ever supercomputer climate models.

Study investigates primary drivers of observed warming: challenges of inadequate data

Urban heat island effect

The study, entitled The Detection and Attribution of Northern Hemisphere Land Surface Warming (1850–2018) in Terms of Human and Natural Factors: Challenges of Inadequate Data (August 2023), has 40 authors, some of whom are regular contributors to the ‘climate debate’ both in published papers and elsewhere. It takes a critical look at recent IPCC reports and summaries, especially the quality or otherwise of some of the data used to support its assertions. It suggests ways some of these issues could/should be addressed. Below is the abstract and the closing summary.
– – –
Abstract
A statistical analysis was applied to Northern Hemisphere land surface temperatures (1850–2018) to try to identify the main drivers of the observed warming since the mid-19th century.

Two different temperature estimates were considered—a rural and urban blend (that matches almost exactly with most current estimates) and a rural-only estimate. The rural and urban blend indicates a long-term warming of 0.89 °C/century since 1850, while the rural-only indicates 0.55 °C/century.

This contradicts a common assumption that current thermometer-based global temperature indices are relatively unaffected by urban warming biases.

Effect of volcanic eruptions significantly underestimated in climate projections, study shows

Volcanic eruption

The idea proposed here of climate model forecasts becoming ‘more robust’ by including smaller effects depends on them being robust to some degree in the first place, which is open to question given their output to date.
– – –
Researchers have found that the cooling effect that volcanic eruptions have on Earth’s surface temperature is likely underestimated by a factor of two, and potentially as much as a factor of four, in standard climate projections, says Phys.org.

While this effect is far from enough to offset the effects of global temperature rise caused by human activity [Talkshop comment – unsupported assertion], the researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, say that small-magnitude eruptions are responsible for as much as half of all the sulfur gases emitted into the upper atmosphere by volcanoes.

The results, reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, suggest that improving the representation of volcanic eruptions of all magnitudes will in turn make climate projections more robust.

Mud volcano discovered in the Barents Sea

Credit: Norman Einstein @ Wikipedia

An expedition co-leader said the team found thousands of methane seeps. The ocean floor is still very much unexplored territory.
– – –
Scientists from UiT, the Arctic University of Norway, in partnership with REV Ocean, have discovered the second ever mud volcano found within Norwegian waters.

This unusual geological phenomenon was discovered onboard the research vessel Kronprins Haakon with the piloted submersible vehicle ROV Aurora in the Southwestern Barents Sea at the outer part of Bjørnøyrenna (Outer Bear Island Trough).

It lies at approximately 70 nautical miles south of Bear Island and at 400m depth.

“Seeing an underwater mud eruption in real time reminded me how “alive” our planet is,” says Professor Giuliana Panieri, expedition leader and Principal Investigator of the AKMA project.

2022 Tongan volcanic eruption was largest natural explosion in more than a century, new study finds

Awesome may be an overused word, but justified here.
– – –
The 2022 eruption of a submarine volcano in Tonga was more powerful than the largest U.S. nuclear explosion, according to a new study led by scientists at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science and the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation.

The 15-megaton volcanic explosion from Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai, one of the largest natural explosions in more than a century, generated a mega-tsunami with waves up to 45 meters high (148 feet) along the coast of Tonga’s Tofua Island and waves up to 17 meters (56 feet) on Tongatapu, the country’s most populated island, says Phys.org.

In a new analysis in Science Advances, Rosenstiel School researchers used a combination of before-and-after satellite imagery, drone mapping, and field observations collected by scientists at the University of Auckland, and data from the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation Global Reef Expedition, to produce a tsunami simulation of the Tongan Archipelago.

Climate models have a volcano problem

Volcanic eruption

At least they now know about it. In tests, ‘inclusion of the eruptions degraded the model’s predictive capabilities’.
– – –
Simulated volcanic eruptions may be blowing up our ability to predict near-term climate, according to a new study published in Science Advances.

The research, led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), finds that the way volcanic eruptions are represented in climate models may be masking the models’ ability to accurately predict variations in sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific that unfold over multiple years to a decade, says Phys.org.

These decadal variations in sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific are linked to climate impacts across the globe, including variations in precipitation and severe weather.

Accurate predictions, therefore, could provide community leaders, farmers, water managers, and others with critical climate information that allows them to plan years in advance.

“Near-term climate prediction on annual to decadal timescales is a rapidly growing and important field in the climate community because it bridges the gap between existing seasonal forecasts and centennial climate projections,” said Xian Wu, who led the study as a postdoctoral researcher at NCAR.

“When we rely on models to make these predictions, it’s important to carefully consider the model’s fidelity. In this case, we found that model errors in simulating the response to volcanic eruptions degraded our prediction skill.”

For the study, Wu and her colleagues relied on two parallel collections of climate simulations from the Decadal Prediction Large Ensemble, a dataset produced using the NCAR-based Community Earth System Model.

These simulations were run as hindcasts and cover the years from 1954–2015, allowing scientists to compare the simulations with what really occurred and evaluate their skill at predicting the future.

One collection of simulations included the three major volcanic eruptions that occurred during the study period: Agung (1963), El Chichón (1982), and Pinatubo (1991). The other collection did not.

Because it is well established that large volcanic eruptions can have significant, long-term cooling effects on the climate, Wu and her colleagues expected that the collection of simulations that included the volcanic eruptions would produce more accurate multiyear and decadal climate predictions.

Instead, they found that the inclusion of the eruptions degraded the model’s predictive capabilities, at least in the tropical Pacific, an area that is especially important because of the connections between sea surface temperatures and near-term climate events.

For example, the simulations that included the volcanoes predicted a subsequent cooling of the sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific after the eruptions. In reality, that region of the ocean warmed, a change that was well predicted by the simulations that did not include the volcanic eruptions.

These findings highlight the difficulty of accurately representing the complex climate impacts that follow a volcanic eruption in a model, a task made more challenging because researchers only have a few real-life examples in the observational record.

Scientists know that volcanoes can loft sulfur gases high into the stratosphere where they can transform into sunlight-reflecting aerosols. But how the resulting cooling ultimately affects the entire Earth system, including sea surface temperatures, is not well understood.

“We just don’t have enough observations,” Wu said. “And our methods to observe what is happening in the stratosphere have only been available since the satellite era, which means we only have Chichón and Pinatubo.”

Full article here.

Medieval writings on lunar eclipses may help date volcanic eruptions

During a total solar eclipse, the Sun’s corona and prominences are visible to the naked eye [image credit: Luc Viatour / https://Lucnix.be ]

A climate detective story.

H/T Paul Vaughan
– – –
When medieval monks were looking up at the night sky, writing down their observations of celestial objects, they had no idea that their words would be invaluable centuries later to a group of scientists in a completely different field: volcanology.

A new study published Wednesday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature explains how descriptions of lunar eclipses by monks and scribes were key in studying some of the largest volcanic eruptions on Earth, says CTV News.

Using a combination of these medieval writings and climate data stretching back centuries, researchers were able to clarify the date of around 10 volcanic eruptions that took place between the year 1100 and 1300.

Scientists offer evidence that Venus is volcanically active

Sulphuric acid in the Venusian clouds was always a hint of possible volcanism.
– – –
Venus appears to have volcanic activity, according to a new research paper that offers strong evidence to answer the lingering question about whether Earth’s sister planet currently has eruptions and lava flows.

Venus, although similar to Earth in size and mass, differs markedly in that it does not have plate tectonics, says Phys.org. The boundaries of Earth’s moving surface plates are the primary locations of volcanic activity.

New research by University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute research professor Robert Herrick revealed a nearly 1-square-mile volcanic vent that changed in shape and grew over eight months in 1991.

Dinosaurs survived when CO2 was extremely high. Why can’t humans?

Current rates of temperature increase, if accurate, don’t look all that startling despite the odd few hot days. For example, Roy Spencer reports a linear warming trend of +0.13C per decade since 1979. We know previous cooling trends must have occurred over the centuries from the regular advance and retreat of glaciers, to cite one obvious line of evidence. Focussing on CO2 all the time is a bit like looking through the wrong end of the telescope.
– – –
How did plants and animals survive around 200 million years ago when the carbon dioxide concentration went up to 6,000 parts per million?

Paul Olsen, a geologist and paleontologist at Columbia Climate School’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, walked us through what scientists know about carbon dioxide levels over time, says Phys.org.

Although no one was around to measure the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration millions of years ago, paleoclimatologists can reconstruct past temperature and carbon dioxide levels using ice cores, tree rings, corals, ancient pollen, and sedimentary rocks.

These natural recorders of climate fluctuations can also reveal how various animals and plants thrived or perished during different geological periods.

Faster in the Past: New seafloor images of West Antarctic Ice Sheet upend understanding of Thwaites Glacier retreat

Some like to call it the Doomsday Glacier. The research results are probably open to a variety of interpretations, in terms of predictions. But we’re told that whatever is being observed at present is by no means exceptional, making attempts at attribution of its ever-changing condition to human activity even more problematic. Volcanic activity is an obvious confounding factor here.
– – –
The Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica — about the size of Florida — has been an elephant in the room for scientists trying to make global sea level rise predictions, says Science Daily.

This massive ice stream is already in a phase of fast retreat (a “collapse” when viewed on geological timescales) leading to widespread concern about exactly how much, or how fast, it may give up its ice to the ocean.

The potential impact of Thwaites’ retreat is spine-chilling: a total loss of the glacier and surrounding icy basins could raise sea level from three to 10 feet.

Iceland Reykjanes volcano update – Alert level raised to yellow, magma activity near geothermal plant

Volcano alerts come and go, but magma disturbances under a geothermal plant are a bit different. A visit to the Blue Lagoon spa could get exciting…
– – –
The alert level of the Reykjanes volcano in Iceland was just raised from green to yellow, says Strange Sounds.

This change was made in response to the confirmation of a new intrusion of magma on the Reykjanes peninsula.

This new intrusion is centered underneath the Svartsengi geothermal power plant, and is quite likely to result in a new volcanic eruption.

If an eruption were to occur, it would be likely to have an explosive component to it and potentially affect the city of Grindavik.

This video discusses the odds of a new volcanic eruption and how explosive it might be.
= = =
Watchers News reports:
More than 3 000 earthquakes have been detected near Eldvörp in the Reykjanes/Svartsengi volcanic system in the past week. In addition, recent deformation observations identified the onset of a new inflation event west of Thorbjörn which is likely caused by magma intrusion.

An Outburst of Noctilucent Clouds

.
.
Possible volcanic origin of these NLCs?

Spaceweather.com

Jan. 25, 2022: On Jan 24th, skies above Argentina suddenly filled with noctilucent clouds (NLCs). A video camera in Rio Gallegos (Patagonia) captured the outburst:

“What a surprise!” says Gerd Baumgarten of Germany’s Leibniz Institute of Atmospheric Physics, who operates this remote camera to minotor southern skies for unusual events. “We haven’t seen NLCs all year. Now, suddenly, they are very bright.”

NLCs are Earth’s highest clouds. They form when wisps of water vapor rise up from the poles to the edge of space. Water crystallizing around specks of meteor dust create the electric-blue structures. NLCs are, literally, frosted meteor smoke.

Normally at this time of year, NLCs are confined inside the Antarctic Circle. So it is a surprise to see them bursting out to mid-southern latitudes; Rio Gallegos is at 51.6^oS.

To confirm that these are truly NLCs, Natalie Kaifler of the German Aerospace Center (DLR)…

View original post 96 more words

Tonga eruption was so intense it caused the atmosphere to ring like a bell

The atmospheric plume from an underwater volcano eruption in the Pacific nation of Tonga is pictured from the International Space Station as it orbited 269 miles above the Pacific Ocean northwest of Auckland, New Zealand [image credit: NASA / Kayla Barron @ Wikipedia]

This NASA animation leaves little room for doubt about how powerful the Tonga event was. The very low-frequency sound waves it produced were first predicted by Laplace over 200 years ago, as the article below explains.
– – –
The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai eruption reached an explosive crescendo on Jan. 15, 2022, says Kevin Hamilton @ The Conversation (via Phys.org).

Its rapid release of energy powered an ocean tsunami that caused damage as far away as the U.S. West Coast, but it also generated pressure waves in the atmosphere that quickly spread around the world.

The atmospheric wave pattern close to the eruption was quite complicated, but thousands of miles away it appeared as an isolated wave front traveling horizontally at over 650 miles an hour as it spread outward.

NASA’s James Garvin, chief scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center, told NPR the space agency estimated the blast was around 10 megatons of TNT equivalent, about 500 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, during World Word II.

La Palma volcanic eruption officially ended on Christmas Day

After flaring for 85 days and 8 hours, La Palma’s longest eruption on record has finally ceased activity.
– – –
Authorities on one of Spain’s Canary Islands declared a volcanic eruption that started in September officially finished Saturday following 10 days of no lava flows, seismic activity or significant sulfur dioxide emissions, reports Phys.org.

But the emergency in La Palma, the most northwest island in the Atlantic Ocean archipelago, is not over due to the widespread damage the eruption caused, the director of the Canaries’ volcanic emergency committee said in announcing the much-anticipated milestone.

Claim: Researchers uncover the surprising cause of the Little Ice Age

A portion of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation [image credit: R. Curry, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution @ Wikipedia]

This article starts off confident that the researchers are right – ‘we now know’ etc. – but later retreats and says ‘the cooling appears to have’ etc. But as the Little Ice Age is an interesting topic it’s worth a look.
– – –
New research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst provides a novel answer to one of the persistent questions in historical climatology, environmental history and the earth sciences: what caused the Little Ice Age?

The answer, we now know, is a paradox: warming, says Phys.org.

The Little Ice Age was one of the coldest periods of the past 10,000 years, a period of cooling that was particularly pronounced in the North Atlantic region.

This cold spell, whose precise timeline scholars debate, but which seems to have set in around 600 years ago, was responsible for crop failures, famines and pandemics throughout Europe, resulting in misery and death for millions.

A Volcanic Comet Blows its Top

.
.
But what kind of volcanoes? One researcher has a theory.

Spaceweather.com

Oct. 14, 2021: So you think you know what a comet is? Think again. Comet 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann is challenging old ideas. Astronomers call it a comet, but, really, “giant space volcano” might be a better description. It’s a 60-km-wide ball of ice orbiting the Sun beyond Jupiter, and it appears to be one of the most volcanically active bodies in the entire Solar System.

Comet 29P just blew its top … again. In late September 2021, 29P erupted 4 times in quick succession, blowing shells of “cryomagma” into space. Arizona amateur astronomer Eliot Herman has been monitoring the debris:

“Initially it looked like a bright compact object,” says Herman. “Now the expanding cloud is 1.3 arcminutes wide (bigger than Jupiter) and sufficiently transparent for background stars to shine through.”

When this object was discovered in 1927, astronomers thought they had found a fairly run-of-the-mill comet, unusual mainly because it was trapped…

View original post 434 more words