Chile's volcano not likely to affect the climate
It's been a busy month for natural disasters, and I haven't found time to talk about Chile's Chaiten volcano, 760 miles (1,220 km) south of the capital Santiago. The volcano started erupting on May 2 for the first time in thousands of years, spewing ash, gas and molten rock into the air, forcing the evacuation of thousands of people. Did this mighty eruption have a cooling effect on the climate?
Figure 1. This May 5, 2008 image from NASA's Terra satellite caught Chaiten erupting. Image credit: NASA.
Many historic volcanic eruptions have had a major cooling impact on Earth's climate. However, Chaiten is very unlikely to be one of them. To see why this is, let's examine recent volcanic eruptions that have had a significant cooling effect on the climate. In the past 200 years, Mt. Pinatubo in the Phillipines (June 1991), El Chichon (Mexico, 1982), Mt. Agung (Indonesia, 1963), Santa Maria (Guatemala, 1902) Krakatoa (Indonesia, 1883), and Tambora (1815) all created noticeable cooling. As one can see from a plot of the solar radiation reaching Mauna Loa in Hawaii (Figure 2), the Mt. Pinatubo and El Chichon eruptions caused a greater than 10% drop in sunlight reaching the surface. The eruption of Tambora in 1815 had an even greater impact, triggering the famed Year Without a Summer in 1816. Killing frosts and snowstorms in May and June 1816 in Eastern Canada and New England caused widespread crop failures, and lake and river ice were observed as far south as Pennsylvania in July and August. Volcanic eruptions cause this kind of climate cooling by throwing large amounts of sulfur dioxide gas into the stratosphere. This gas reacts with water to form sulphuric acid droplets (aerosol particles), which are highly reflective, and reduce the amount of incoming sunlight.
You'll notice from the list of eruptions above that all of these climate-cooling events were from volcanoes in the tropics. Above the tropics, the stratosphere's circulation features rising air, which pulls the sulfur-containing volcanic aerosols high into the stratosphere, where the upper-level winds circulate them all around the globe. These aerosol particles take a year or two to settle back down to earth, since there is no rain in the stratosphere to help remove them. However, if a major volcanic eruption occurs in the mid-latitudes or polar regions, the circulation of the stratosphere in those regions generally features downward subsiding air, and the volcanic aerosol particles are not able to penetrate high in the stratosphere and get carried all around the globe. Chaiten is located near 40° south latitude, far from the tropics, and thus is unlikely to be able to inject significant amounts of sulfur aerosols into the stratosphere. Furthermore, the character of Chaiten's eruptions so far has been to eject a lot of silica and not much sulfur into the air. The total amount of sulfur ejected has been only about 1/10000 of what Mt. Pinatubo put into the air, according to NASA.
Figure 2. Reduced solar radiation due to volcanic aerosols as measured at Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii. Image credit: NOAA/ESRL.
Realclimate.org has a nice article that goes into the volcano-climate connection in greater detail. One interesting quote from the article: There can be some exceptions to the tropics-only rule, and at least one high latitude volcano appears to have had significant climate effects; Laki (Iceland, 1783-1784). The crucial factor was that the eruption was almost continuous for over 8 months which lead to significantly elevated sulphate concentrations for that whole time over much of the Atlantic and European regions, even though stratospheric concentrations were likely not particularly exceptional.
My next blog will talk about new research regarding the hurricanes/global warming connection.
Jeff Masters
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Not much weather today, hence the oil prices, bush and likewise blah, blah, blah
I only posted that once -
Sen. Kennedy has malignant brain tumor
The sun's still pretty clear. We'll see how those predictions of a late May ramp-up in activity will bear out. Only one pesky SC-23 spot hanging around...not much to write home about.
Good.
OMG !!..I had Joe Bastardi's Chile Volcano Surprise fer Lunch..
Chekov,no..cchs,you've got the Conn.
I'll be in my...er..Blog
Yes, sir.
TROPICAL WAVE IS ALONG 48W S OF 11N MOVING W 15 KT. VISIBLE
IMAGERY SHOWS LOW-MID LEVEL CYCLONIC TURNING FOCUSED ALONG THE
AXIS NEAR 6N. SCATTERED SHOWERS AND TSTMS COVER A FAIRLY LARGE
420 NM AREA EITHER SIDE OF THE AXIS FROM 3N-7N...ENHANCED BY A
LARGE AMPLITUDE UPPER TROUGH.
...THE ITCZ...
ITCZ AXIS IS CENTERED ALONG 8N13W 5N23W 3N35W 5N45W 4N52W.
SCATTERED MODERATE CONVECTION IS WITHIN 150 NM N AND 300 NM S OF
THE AXIS BETWEEN 33W-39W. A LOW-LATITUDE TROPICAL WAVE HAS
LIKELY JUST MOVED OFF THE COAST OF W AFRICA AND IS ENHANCING
SCATTERED MODERATE ISOLATED STRONG CONVECTION FROM 6N-9N BETWEEN
16W-20W. THIS FEATURE WILL BE ADDED TO THE SFC ANALYSIS SOON.
I don't mind talking about other things, such as gas prices, etc when the weather isn't exciting enough for some, but I'd like to keep political arguements out of the blog if at all possible
The best comment all day.
3 to 4 with 2 being hurricanes...
For this year, Evan's models predict that dust will cool the Atlantic by about 1.1 degrees Celsius, very close to the average effect of dust on the ocean temperature during the past 27 years. He says this amount of cooling alone is not likely to trigger especially high or low hurricane activity.
source
For the love of all that is holy or not can we please keep the political chat out of this blog. If i wanted to read that id go to Politico.com. It gets downright frustrating when people have to toot their horns to defend their political viewpoints in this blog. Im just going to start reporting people to the admins if it keeps up and im sure if enough of us do so then some bans will be warranted. Its going to be hard enough to sift through all of the commentary later on in the hurricane season and this stuff just clutters it even further.
1212. HouseofGryffindor 12:49 PM CDT on May 20, 2008
1207. ClearH2OFla 5:45 PM GMT on May 20, 2008
Dang house a polotics chat and you forgot to tell me.
I've given up on it for now... Some people watch too much Faux (Fox) News to know reality.
How about you just give it a rest and stop feeding into it. Constantly you say "oh im done for now" then come right back to it. Two things you never argue: politics and religion. There is no "right" or "wrong" answer. Just a differing viewpoint and disrespecting others in the process is no fun. I could off on politics in this blog but i choose not to because this is not why it exists. I come here for weather chat, not to hear someones uninformed or informed opinion about the latest governmental policies.
If I read that correctly, it seems dust was at its lowest 2004-2006. Couple of fairly big years in there.
Waiting for the storms....Have a feeling we are going to have an active season - with one maybe 2 FLorida landfalls - Maybe a NE coast too if that Berm. High stays out where it is.
Little dust and mostly north, not very concentrated on the CIMSS site.
Hardly anything in the upper levels.
Very moderate, comparatively, at the mid-levels.
EUMETSAT's dust product shows very little dust/dry air in this loop.
1155. jphurricane2006 1:13 PM EDT on May 20, 2008
yeah the voice of reason, welcome back StormW
ok so what do you think about the GFS consistency with developing something next week, it is showing the low again on the 12Z run
Just finished looking at the model runs (NOGAPS, CMC, UKMET, ECMWF, GFS)...I think again, we may be seeing the signs of the GFS feedback issue. Why this happens with this particular model so often...is beyond me. None of the other models have this feature. Basically, the GFS feedback problem is the GFS having problems with handling heat in the tropics. It has the tendenecy to show more heat than what is there, and to get rid of it, it develops a storm. Though it's early, it will be interesting to "watch" that area, as the maps are almost indicative of a situational development type setup (here's what we have): High pressure will be over the northern tier of the U.S. (Great Lakes), the A/B high out in the Atlantic (very close to the Azores). So, that would naturally leave lowering pressures down in the Caribbean (as relative to the position of the two highs).
Great response StormW. Way to hit the nail on the head with the GFS. I usually take what its showing and try to prove it. Making an old man older LOL. Good to see you back!
1) Are we (and our models) ignoring the big elephant in the room – PDO? We didn’t have quality weather satellites until the late 70’s and early 80’s so most of our detailed data was collected during a Positive PDO period. It looks as though the negative PDO has shifted into overdrive this year. Perhaps this is going to throw a wrench into our models and predictions since we don’t have a good history built in to show how seasonal variations change with a shift in the PDO. Although ENSO appears to be moving to a neutral state, the negative PDO could maintain “La Nina-like conditions” as noted in an NOAA report that was recently posted by someone else earlier this week. Most of the analog years being thrown out there are from the 90’s and 00’s when we should really be looking at the years from the 1950’s and 60’s for true analog situations. What this means IMO is that we’ll see more shear than expected and more CV activity that ends up sleeping with the fish. While there’s always a chance a storm or two will slip through, I think we could see more of the extra-tropical/nor’easter type systems this season.
2) My theory regarding the normal or slightly below normal SST’s in the western Atlantic - Don’t forget that hurricanes are heat engines that remove and redistribute heat energy. We had 2 large major storms go through the same region last year that sucked out a lot of energy and redistributed it in the form of wind and rain. We may just be seeing the after effects of those storms. Remember it took the GOM a while after Katrina and Rita to heat back up.
Any thoughts?
There was no weekly ENSO update yesterday from the CPC, in fact, it looked as if it posted the one from the week before. I haven't looked today, though. I think the SST's are, pretty much everywhere, already quite conducive for development - that's not the problem. It's just not June yet.
I think we'll likely see a bit of a late starter with some Carib/GOM possibilities; then, the CV's will crank up, maybe with some vigor. We can have Fish, eCoast, FL and GOM landfalls still, with a "weak" and easterly positioned high.
We wait, we see!
1237. That's good reasonable discernment imo. I've been looking at PDO condiitions a good bit lately, too. Good observations, conclusions.
There was no weekly ENSO update yesterday from the CPC, in fact, it looked as if it posted the one from the week before. I haven't looked today, though. I think the SST's are, pretty much everywhere, already quite conducive for development - that's not the problem. It's just not June yet.
I think we'll likely see a bit of a late starter with some Carib/GOM possibilities; then, the CV's will crank up, maybe with some vigor. We can have Fish, eCoast,
i think more east coast possibilities with that setup than gulf coasts thank goodness
Good paper on the effects of Katrina on SSTs:
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/altimetry/katrina1.pdf
SST's after Katrina:
SST's after Katrina:
30 days later:
August of 2006 SST's in the Gulf of Mexico:
hmmm hey caneaddict umm those thunderstorms with that cape verde wave that i said were gonna dissapate and they are i was right and u were wrong!
Uncalled for and not welcome in this blog. You will fastrack your way to a ban if you keep this up.
The disturbed weather in the SW caribbean to me is likely to move onshore before anything can get going on the atlantic side.Once it moves out into the pacific i think it may have a shot at being the first storm system for the pacific.
Here is the TAFB showing it moving onshore soon.
In this way, Spanish and American experts have been working on another interesting case: 24-29th October 1842: then, those experts have researched on the case of a tropical cyclone hitting Spain, 170 years ago.
It has been said that the storm developed at the southwest of Madeira and it moved to the Iberian Peninsula, hitting land from the Cadiz Gulf. Those experts consider it hit Spain as a hurricane category and damages could be compare with the damages caused by a category 2 hurricane.
With VINCE, it was said it had been the first tropical cyclone to hit Spain... But it seems that it was not like that :)
Has someone more information of that 1842 atlantic hurricane season? There is few data on Internet, only some papers and documents.
Link
We have been talking about this in our forum:
Link
Saludos desde España
Yea he was realy mean to me yesterday.
Wow trying to start trouble? For one, Your wrong, There is only one tropical wave in the Atlantic right now located near 48W. Also i agreed that thunderstorm activity would die down, I disagreed with the fact that you said that because it's June thunderstorm activity can't persist, Which was a very false statement. You also provided no reasonable support for what you said yesterday regarding this cluster of convection. (It's not a wave) I am not going to continue agruing with you though, Anyway good day all!
TCHP
Depth 26.C Isotherm
http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/east/watl/loop-rgb.html
http://www.ghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/GOES/goeseasthurr.html
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