Arctic sea ice response to the eruptions of Agung, El Chichón, and Pinatubo

Gagné, Marie-Ève; Kirchmeier‐Young, Megan C.; Gillett, Nathan P.; Fyfe, John C.

doi:10.1002/2017jd027038

Cited by 22 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…The same applies to the study of Kirchner et al (1999), who improved the horizontal resolution but retained the same deficient vertical structure of their model. A severe lack of vertical resolution is also evident in the AMIP models analyzed in Mao and Robock (1998), all of which (with only one exception) have between 10 and 20 vertical levels (see Table 2 of Gates, 1992). The same goes for the study of Collins (2003): 19 vertical levels.…”

Section: Summary and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 75%

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Northern Hemisphere continental winter warming following the 1991 Mt. Pinatubo eruption: reconciling models and observations

2019

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Abstract. It has been suggested, and is widely believed, that the anomalous surface warming observed over the Northern Hemisphere continents in the winter following the 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo was, in fact, caused by that eruption, via a stratospheric pathway that involves a strengthening of the polar vortex. However, most studies that have examined multiple, state-of-the-art, coupled climate models report that, in the ensemble mean, the models do not show winter warming after the Mt. Pinatubo eruption. This lack of surface warming in the multi-model mean, concomitant with a frequent lack of strengthening of the polar vortex, is often interpreted as a failure of the models to reproduce the observations. In this paper we show that this interpretation is erroneous, as averaging many simulations from different models, or from the same model, is not expected to yield surface anomalies similar to the observed ones, even if the models were highly accurate, owing to the presence of strong internal variability. We here analyze three large ensembles of state-of-the-art, coupled climate model simulations and show that, in all three, many individual ensemble members are able to produce post-Pinatubo surface warming in winter that is comparable to the observed one. This establishes that current-generation climate models are perfectly capable of reproducing the observed surface post-eruption warming. We also confirm the bulk of previous studies, and show that the surface anomaly is not statistically different from zero when averaged across ensembles of simulations, which we interpret as the simple fact that the volcanic impact on continental winter temperatures is tiny compared to internal variability. We also carefully examine the stratospheric pathway in our models and, again confirming previous work, show that any strengthening of the polar vortex caused by the Mt. Pinatubo eruption is very small (of the order of a few meters per second at best). Such minuscule anomalies of the stratospheric circulation are completely overwhelmed by the tropospheric variability at midlatitudes, which is known to be very large: this explains the lack of surface winter warming in the ensemble means. In summary, our analysis and interpretation offer compelling new evidence that the observed warming of the Northern Hemisphere continents in the winter 1991–1992 was very likely unrelated to the 1991 Mt. Pinatubo eruption.

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Section: Summary and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 75%

“…We note that all three models were previously used to study the climatic effects of volcanic eruptions (English et al, 2013;Lehner et al, 2016;Gagné et al, 2017). More importantly, for all three models we have available a large ensemble of integrations which cover the second half of the 20th century.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Northern Hemisphere continental winter warming following the 1991 Mt. Pinatubo eruption: reconciling models and observations

2019

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“…We perform our forecasts containing a Pinatubo-like eruption with the baseline1 version of the MiKlip prediction system (Marotzke et al, 2016;Pohlmann et al, 2013), which is based on the coupled Max Planck Institute-Earth System Model (MPI-ESM; Giorgetta et al, 2013;Jungclaus et al, 2013). The MPI-ESM is an Earth system model with atmosphere, ocean, and dynamic vegetation components.…”

Section: Model Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the impact of a future volcanic eruption on decadal predictions

Illing¹,

Kadow²,

Pohlmann

et al. 2018

Earth Syst. Dynam.

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Abstract. The likelihood of a large volcanic eruption in the future provides the largest uncertainty concerning the evolution of the climate system on the timescale of a few years, but also an excellent opportunity to learn about the behavior of the climate system, and our models thereof. So the following question emerges: how predictable is the response of the climate system to future eruptions? By this we mean to what extent will the volcanic perturbation affect decadal climate predictions and how does the pre-eruption climate state influence the impact of the volcanic signal on the predictions? To address these questions, we performed decadal forecasts with the MiKlip prediction system, which is based on the MPI-ESM, in the low-resolution configuration for the initialization years 2012 and 2014, which differ in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) phase. Each forecast contains an artificial Pinatubo-like eruption starting in June of the first prediction year and consists of 10 ensemble members. For the construction of the aerosol radiative forcing, we used the global aerosol model ECHAM5-HAM in a version adapted for volcanic eruptions. We investigate the response of different climate variables, including near-surface air temperature, precipitation, frost days, and sea ice area fraction. Our results show that the average global cooling response over 4 years of about 0.2 K and the precipitation decrease of about 0.025 mm day−1 is relatively robust throughout the different experiments and seemingly independent of the initialization state. However, on a regional scale, we find substantial differences between the initializations. The cooling effect in the North Atlantic and Europe lasts longer and the Arctic sea ice increase is stronger in the simulations initialized in 2014. In contrast, the forecast initialized in 2012 with a negative PDO shows a prolonged cooling in the North Pacific basin.

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“…As a result, global‐mean surface temperature decreases while the lower stratosphere warms. These radiative and thermal perturbations can in turn lead to changes in various components of the global climate system, that is, the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (McGregor & Timmermann, ; Maher et al, ; Stevenson et al, ; Khodri et al, ; Predybaylo et al, ; Liu et al, ), the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ; ; Zuo et al, ; Pausata & Camargo, ), tropical cyclones or TCs (Evan, ; Guevara‐Murua et al, ; Jones et al, ; Yan et al, ; Camargo & Polvani, ; Pausata & Camargo, ), polar vortex and North Atlantic Oscillation (Robock & Mao, ; Kirchner et al, ; Wunderlich & Mitchell, ), Arctic sea ice (Stenchikov et al, ; Ding et al, ; Gagnė et al, ), and Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Stenchikov et al, ; Ding et al, ; Pausata et al, ; Swingedouw et al, ). However, the impacts of volcanoes often have large uncertainties that arise either from the low signal‐to‐noise ratio (Driscoll et al, ; Ménégoz et al, ; Swingedouw et al, ; Wunderlich & Mitchell, ; Polvani et al, ) or their dependence on the initial state of the climate (Thomas et al, ; Zanchettin et al, ; Pausata et al, ; Swingedouw et al, ; Lehner et al, ; Pausata et al, ; Ménégoz et al, ; Gagnė et al, ; Predybaylo et al, ), and the estimation of the impacts might also be model‐dependent even the same volcanic radiative properties are specified (Zanchettin et al, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate Impacts From Large Volcanic Eruptions in a High‐Resolution Climate Model: The Importance of Forcing Structure

Yang

Vecchi

Fueglistaler

et al. 2019

Geophysical Research Letters

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Explosivevolcanic eruptions have large climate impacts and can serve as observable tests of the climatic response to radiative forcing. Using a high‐resolution climate model, we contrast the climate responses to Pinatubo, with symmetric forcing, and those to Santa Maria and Agung, which had meridionally asymmetric forcing. Although Pinatubo had larger global‐mean forcing, asymmetric forcing strongly shifts the latitude of tropical rainfall features, leading to larger local precipitation/tropical cyclone changes. For example, North Atlantic tropical cyclone activity over is enhanced/reduced by SH forcing (Agung)/NH forcing (Santa Maria) but changes little in response to the Pinatubo forcing. Moreover, the transient climate sensitivity estimated from the response to Santa Maria is 20% larger than that from Pinatubo or Agung. This spread in climatic impacts of volcanoes needs to be considered when evaluating the role of volcanoes in global and regional climate and serves to contextualize the well‐observed response to Pinatubo.

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Arctic sea ice response to the eruptions of Agung, El Chichón, and Pinatubo

Cited by 22 publications

References 24 publications

Northern Hemisphere continental winter warming following the 1991 Mt. Pinatubo eruption: reconciling models and observations

Northern Hemisphere continental winter warming following the 1991 Mt. Pinatubo eruption: reconciling models and observations

Assessing the impact of a future volcanic eruption on decadal predictions

Climate Impacts From Large Volcanic Eruptions in a High‐Resolution Climate Model: The Importance of Forcing Structure

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