The Influence of Volcanic Aerosol Meridional Structure on Monsoon Responses over the Last Millennium

Fasullo, John T.; Otto‐Bliesner, Bette L.; Stevenson, Samantha

doi:10.1029/2019gl084377

Cited by 20 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…For context, 4 °C cooling is approximately four times the magnitude of global warming from 1880 to 2012 (United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report). The muted cooling in the SH, which is consistent with prior work (31,44,54,55), highlights the role of the ocean in modulating the cooling (45,56) from the stratospheric volcanic aerosol cloud. In addition, the fact that the aerosol cloud is located over the NH in the majority of our simulations (SI Appendix, Figs.…”

Section: Regional Temperature Response Patterns and The Role Of The Ocean In Modulating The Climate Responsesupporting

confidence: 85%

Global climate disruption and regional climate shelters after the Toba supereruption

Black

Lamarque

Marsh

et al. 2021

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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The Toba eruption ∼74,000 y ago was the largest volcanic eruption since the start of the Pleistocene and represents an important test case for understanding the effects of large explosive eruptions on climate and ecosystems. However, the magnitude and repercussions of climatic changes driven by the eruption are strongly debated. High-resolution paleoclimate and archaeological records from Africa find little evidence for the disruption of climate or human activity in the wake of the eruption in contrast with a controversial link with a bottleneck in human evolution and climate model simulations predicting strong volcanic cooling for up to a decade after a Toba-scale eruption. Here, we use a large ensemble of high-resolution Community Earth System Model (CESM1.3) simulations to reconcile climate model predictions with paleoclimate records, accounting for uncertainties in the magnitude of Toba sulfur emissions with high and low emission scenarios. We find a near-zero probability of annual mean surface temperature anomalies exceeding 4 °C in most of Africa in contrast with near 100% probabilities of cooling this severe in Asia and North America for the high sulfur emission case. The likelihood of strong decreases in precipitation is low in most of Africa. Therefore, even Toba sulfur release at the upper range of plausible estimates remains consistent with the muted response in Africa indicated by paleoclimate proxies. Our results provide a probabilistic view of the uneven patterns of volcanic climate disruption during a crucial interval in human evolution, with implications for understanding the range of environmental impacts from past and future supereruptions.

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Section: Regional Temperature Response Patterns and The Role Of The Ocean In Modulating The Climate Responsesupporting

confidence: 85%

Global climate disruption and regional climate shelters after the Toba supereruption

Black

Lamarque

Marsh

et al. 2021

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…Liu et al (2016) discovered that the monsoon precipitation in one hemisphere is substantially increased by the other hemispheric volcanic eruptions using the Community Earth System Model (CESM), and this volcano-induced remote enhancement is mainly through circulation changes. Similarly, recent studies using the CESM1-CAM5 and proxy data found a weakened (strengthened) Northern (Southern) Hemisphere monsoon following northern eruptions (Fasullo et al 2019;Meng et al 2019). They suggested that the dynamic process associated with atmospheric circulation change plays an essential role in precipitation response.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 68%

Global monsoon response to tropical and Arctic stratospheric aerosol injection

et al. 2020

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Stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) is considered as a backup approach to mitigate global warming, and understanding its climate impact is of great societal concern. It remains unclear how differently global monsoon (GM) precipitation would change in response to tropical and Arctic SAI. Using the Community Earth System Model, a control experiment and a suite of 140-year experiments with CO2 increasing by 1% per year (1% CO2) are conducted, including ten tropical SAI and ten Arctic SAI experiments with different injecting intensity ranging from 10 to 100 Tg yr−1. For the same amount of injection, a larger reduction in global temperature occurs under tropical SAI compared with Arctic SAI. The simulated result in the last 40 years shows that, for a 10 Tg yr−1 injection, GM precipitation decreases by 1.1% (relative to the 1% CO2 experiment) under Arctic SAI, which is weaker than under tropical SAI (1.9%). Further, tropical SAI suppresses precipitation globally, but Arctic SAI reduces the Northern Hemisphere monsoon (NHM) precipitation by 2.3% and increases the Southern Hemisphere monsoon (SHM) precipitation by 0.7%. Under the effect of tropical SAI, the reduced GM precipitation is mainly due to the thermodynamic term associated with the tropical cooling-induced decreased moisture content. The hemispheric antisymmetric impact of Arctic SAI arises from the dynamic term related to anomalous moisture convergence influenced by the anomalous meridional temperature gradient.

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“…These shortcomings are known to impact regional features of the precipitation distribution and its response to forcing. Other aspects however, such as land-ocean contrasts and simulated increase in ensemble spread in large-scale precipitation metrics are less sensitive to such effects, as they are rooted in energetically constrained responses (Fasullo et al, 2019) and thermodynamic contrasts between land and ocean (Fasullo, 2012). When considering regional precipitation responses over 20-year time periods, large simulation ensembles with many volcanic forcing evolutions are needed to sufficiently sample potential volcanism and robustly detect responses in the presence of large regional internal climate variability, partly related to ENSO (Paik et al, 2020).…”

Section: Summary and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Potential Influences of Volcanic Eruptions on Future Global Land Monsoon Precipitation Changes

et al. 2021

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The global monsoon system is of exceptional socioeconomic importance owing to its impacts on two‐thirds of the globe’s population. Major volcanic eruptions strongly influence global land monsoon (GLM) precipitation change. By using 60 plausible eruption scenarios sampled from reconstructed volcanic proxies over the past 2,500 years, 21st century volcanic influences on GLM precipitation projections are examined with an Earth system model under a moderate emission scenario. The decadal‐scale ensemble spread with realistic eruptions (VOLC) increases by 17.5% and 20.1% compared to no‐volcanic (NO‐VOLC) and constant background‐volcanic (VOLC‐CONST) scenarios, respectively. Compared with NO‐VOLC, the centennial mean VOLC GLM precipitation shows a 10% overall reduction and regionally, Asia is the most impacted. Changes in atmospheric circulation in the aftermath of large volcanic eruptions match the global warming response patterns well with opposite sign, with the North American monsoon precipitation enhanced following large volcanic eruptions, which is in sharp contrast to the robust decrease in Asian monsoon rainfall. Volcanic activity could delay the time of emergence of anthropogenic influence by five years on average over about 60% of the GLM area. Our results demonstrate the importance of statistical representation of potential volcanism for the projections of future monsoon variability. Quantifying volcanic impacts on regional climate projections and their socioeconomic influences on infrastructure planning, food security, and disaster management should be a priority of future work.

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The Influence of Volcanic Aerosol Meridional Structure on Monsoon Responses over the Last Millennium

Cited by 20 publications

References 54 publications

Global climate disruption and regional climate shelters after the Toba supereruption

Global climate disruption and regional climate shelters after the Toba supereruption

Global monsoon response to tropical and Arctic stratospheric aerosol injection

Potential Influences of Volcanic Eruptions on Future Global Land Monsoon Precipitation Changes

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