Volcanic stratospheric injections up to 160&thinsp;Tg(S) yield a Eurasian winter warming indistinguishable from internal variability

DallaSanta, Kevin; Polvani, Lorenzo M.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-8843-2022

Articles | Volume 22, issue 13

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-8843-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-8843-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 22, issue 13

Research article

|

08 Jul 2022

Research article |

| 08 Jul 2022

Volcanic stratospheric injections up to 160 Tg(S) yield a Eurasian winter warming indistinguishable from internal variability

Kevin DallaSanta and Lorenzo M. Polvani

Data sets

NASA-GISS GISS-E2-2-G model output prepared for CMIP6 CMIP historical NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA/GISS) https://doi.org/10.22033/ESGF/CMIP6.7129

Easy Volcanic Aerosol (EVA v1.0): an idealized forcing generator for climate simulations (https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-9-4049-2016-supplement)) Matthew Toohey, Bjorn Stevens, Hauke Schmidt, and Claudia Timmreck https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-9-4049-2016

Model code and software

GISS Model E2. 2: A Climate Model Optimized for the Middle Atmosphere -- 2. Validation of Large-Scale Transport and Evaluation of Climate Response (https://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelE/) Clara Orbe, David Rind, Jeffrey Jonas, Larissa Nazarenko, Greg Faluvegi, Lee T. Murray, Drew T. Shindell, Kostas Tsigaridis, Tiehan Zhou, Maxwell Kelley, and Gavin A. Schmidt https://doi.org/10.1029/2020JD033151

GISS Model E2.2: A Climate Model Optimized for the Middle Atmosphere - Model Structure, Climatology, Variability, and Climate Sensitivity (https://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelE/) D. Rind, C. Orbe, J. Jonas, L. Nazarenko, T. Zhou, M. Kelley, A. Lacis, D. Shindell, G. Faluvegi, A. Romanou, G. Russell, N. Tausnev, M. Bauer, and G. Schmidt https://doi.org/10.1029/2019JD032204

Short summary

Volcanic eruptions cool the earth by reducing the amount of sunlight reaching the surface. Paradoxically, it has been suggested that they may also warm the surface, but the evidence for this is scant. Here, we show that a small warming can be seen in a climate model for large-enough eruptions. However, even for eruptions much larger than those that have occurred in the past two millennia, post-eruption winters over Eurasia are indistinguishable from those occurring without a prior eruption.