Krakatoa lives: The effect of volcanic eruptions on ocean heat content and thermal expansion

Gleckler, P. J.; AchutaRao, Krishna; Gregory, Jonathan M.; Santer, B. D.; Taylor, Karl E.; Wigley, T. M. L.

doi:10.1029/2006gl026771

Cited by 89 publications

(98 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Previous studies have suggested that the oceans were affected by Krakatau's cooling for some decades (e.g. Gleckler et al, 2006). If the cooling associated with Krakatau is indeed less than the models suggest because of the mechanism explained above, model predictions of 20th century heat content and sea level change may be biased.…”

Section: Discussion and Implications For Krakataumentioning

confidence: 85%

The climatic effects of the direct injection of water vapour into the stratosphere by large volcanic eruptions

Joshi

Jones

2009

Atmos. Chem. Phys.

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Abstract. We describe a novel mechanism that can significantly lower the amplitude of the climatic response to certain large volcanic eruptions and examine its impact with a coupled ocean-atmosphere climate model. If sufficiently large amounts of water vapour enter the stratosphere, a climatically significant amount of water vapour can be left over in the lower stratosphere after the eruption, even after sulphate aerosol formation. This excess stratospheric humidity warms the tropospheric climate, and acts to balance the climatic cooling induced by the volcanic aerosol, especially because the humidity anomaly lasts for a period that is longer than the residence time of aerosol in the stratosphere. In particular, northern hemisphere high latitude cooling is reduced in magnitude. We discuss this mechanism in the context of the discrepancy between the observed and modelled cooling following the Krakatau eruption in 1883. We hypothesize that moist coignimbrite plumes caused by pyroclastic flows travelling over ocean rather than land, resulting from an eruption close enough to the ocean, might provide the additional source of stratospheric water vapour.

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Section: Discussion and Implications For Krakataumentioning

confidence: 85%

The climatic effects of the direct injection of water vapour into the stratosphere by large volcanic eruptions

Joshi

Jones

2009

Atmos. Chem. Phys.

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“…In terms of surface cooling pattern, Jones et al (2005) obtained the largest cooling over north-eastern America and European Arctic and eastern Siberia, whereas in our model the biggest response appears over central Siberia. This difference seems to be due to the missing feedback related to atmospheric By analysing a series of ocean-atmosphere GCM experiments recently performed by the climate modelling community, Gleckler et al (2006) investigated the effect of volcanic eruptions on oceanic heat content and penetration of ocean cooling with time. In response to the series of volcanic eruptions that occurred before industrialization, ocean heat content decreased substantially and the low heat content persisted for a long time as a result of recurring volcanic eruptions.…”

Section: Comparison To Other Model Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There have been many studies on the effect of volcanic eruptions on global climate change (Robock 2000;Stenchikov et al 1998Stenchikov et al , 2002Stenchikov et al , 2004Stenchikov et al , 2009Kirchner et al 1999;Yang and Schlesinger 2002;Shindell et al 2004;Gleckler et al 2006;Frölicher et al 2011;Mignot et al 2011;Ottera et al 2010;Zanchettin et al 2012). The studies showed that large volcanic eruptions emit sulphur gases into the stratosphere, which become sulphate aerosols.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…From numerous studies on the effect of volcanic eruptions on global climate change, the change in surface response is relatively well known. Several studies have been conducted to examine the response of the ocean to volcanic eruptions (e.g., Jones et al 2005;Gleckler et al 2006;Stenchikov et al 2009;Mignot et al 2011;Ottera et al 2010;Zanchettin et al 2012). However, the effect of volcanic eruption on the ocean and its feedback on climate change remains unclear.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ocean Response to the Pinatubo and 1259 Volcanic Eruptions

Kim¹,

Kim²

2012

Ocean and Polar Research

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: The ocean's response to the Pinatubo and 1259 volcanic eruptions was investigated using an ocean general circulation model equipped with an energy balance model. Volcanic eruptions release gases into the atmosphere which increases the aerosol optical depth and acts to reduce the incoming short-wave radiation. For example, there was a huge volcanic eruption (Pinatubo) in 1991 which reduced the global mean radiative forcing by about 3 W m −2 . Two numerical experiments were simulated. The first experiment features the Pinatubo eruption and the second experiment simulates the much larger volcanic eruption that occurred in 1259 when the radiative forcing was reduced by 7 times compared to the Pinatubo event. With the reduced radiative forcing due to the Pinatubo eruption at about 3 W m −2 and 1259 eruption at about 21 W m −2 , the global mean sea surface temperature (SST) decreased to its lowest in the second year after each event by about 0.4 o C and 1.6 o C, respectively. Sea surface salinity (SSS) increased substantially in the northern North Pacific, northern North Atlantic, and the Southern Ocean. The reduced SST together with SSS increased ocean convection, which yielded an increase in North Atlantic Deep Water, Antarctic Bottom Water, and North Pacific Intermediate Water production and their outflows. The increase in overturning circulation eventually increased the pole-ward ocean heat fluxes. In conclusion, huge volcanic eruptions perturb the ocean substantially and their hallmarks last for more than a decade, confirming the importance of volcanic eruptions in illustrating the decadal-climate variability recorded in the paleoclimate proxy data for the past million years.

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“…1a). This GMTSL fall is caused by decreased ocean temperatures as a result of negative radiative forcing after volcanic eruptions and is followed by a slow recovery (Church et al 2005;Gleckler et al 2006;Gregory et al 2006). The net GMTSL change in historical simulations with volcanic forcing is dependent on whether or not volcanic forcing was included in the control run, as the omission of volcanic forcing in the control run results in a negative bias in GMTSL when volcanic forcing is introduced in the historical period (Gregory 2010;Gregory et al 2013).…”

Section: Global Mean Thermosteric Sea Level Changementioning

confidence: 99%

The Sea Level Response to External Forcings in Historical Simulations of CMIP5 Climate Models*

et al. 2015

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Changes in Earth's climate are influenced by internal climate variability and external forcings, such as changes in solar radiation, volcanic eruptions, anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHG), and aerosols. Although the response of surface temperature to external forcings has been studied extensively, this has not been done for sea level. Here, a range of climate model experiments for the twentieth century is used to study the response of global and regional sea level change to external climate forcings. Both the global mean thermosteric sea level and the regional dynamic sea level patterns show clear responses to anthropogenic forcings that are significantly different from internal climate variability and larger than the difference between models driven by the same external forcing. The regional sea level patterns are directly related to changes in surface winds in response to the external forcings. The spread between different realizations of the same model experiment is consistent with internal climate variability derived from preindustrial control simulations. The spread between the different models is larger than the internal variability, mainly in regions with large sea level responses. Although the sea level responses to GHG and anthropogenic aerosol forcing oppose each other in the global mean, there are differences on a regional scale, offering opportunities for distinguishing between these two forcings in observed sea level change.

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Krakatoa lives: The effect of volcanic eruptions on ocean heat content and thermal expansion

Cited by 89 publications

References 21 publications

The climatic effects of the direct injection of water vapour into the stratosphere by large volcanic eruptions

The climatic effects of the direct injection of water vapour into the stratosphere by large volcanic eruptions

Ocean Response to the Pinatubo and 1259 Volcanic Eruptions

The Sea Level Response to External Forcings in Historical Simulations of CMIP5 Climate Models*

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