Assessing the impact of a future volcanic eruption on decadal predictions
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 que...
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ftcopernicus:oai:publications.copernicus.org:esd66309 2023-05-15T15:15:59+02:00 Assessing the impact of a future volcanic eruption on decadal predictions Illing, Sebastian Kadow, Christopher Pohlmann, Holger Timmreck, Claudia 2018-09-27 application/pdf https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-9-701-2018 https://esd.copernicus.org/articles/9/701/2018/ eng eng doi:10.5194/esd-9-701-2018 https://esd.copernicus.org/articles/9/701/2018/ eISSN: 2190-4987 Text 2018 ftcopernicus https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-9-701-2018 2020-07-20T16:23:15Z 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. Text Arctic North Atlantic North Atlantic oscillation Sea ice Copernicus Publications: E-Journals Arctic Pacific Earth System Dynamics 9 2 701 715 |
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Open Polar |
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Copernicus Publications: E-Journals |
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ftcopernicus |
language |
English |
description |
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. |
format |
Text |
author |
Illing, Sebastian Kadow, Christopher Pohlmann, Holger Timmreck, Claudia |
spellingShingle |
Illing, Sebastian Kadow, Christopher Pohlmann, Holger Timmreck, Claudia Assessing the impact of a future volcanic eruption on decadal predictions |
author_facet |
Illing, Sebastian Kadow, Christopher Pohlmann, Holger Timmreck, Claudia |
author_sort |
Illing, Sebastian |
title |
Assessing the impact of a future volcanic eruption on decadal predictions |
title_short |
Assessing the impact of a future volcanic eruption on decadal predictions |
title_full |
Assessing the impact of a future volcanic eruption on decadal predictions |
title_fullStr |
Assessing the impact of a future volcanic eruption on decadal predictions |
title_full_unstemmed |
Assessing the impact of a future volcanic eruption on decadal predictions |
title_sort |
assessing the impact of a future volcanic eruption on decadal predictions |
publishDate |
2018 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-9-701-2018 https://esd.copernicus.org/articles/9/701/2018/ |
geographic |
Arctic Pacific |
geographic_facet |
Arctic Pacific |
genre |
Arctic North Atlantic North Atlantic oscillation Sea ice |
genre_facet |
Arctic North Atlantic North Atlantic oscillation Sea ice |
op_source |
eISSN: 2190-4987 |
op_relation |
doi:10.5194/esd-9-701-2018 https://esd.copernicus.org/articles/9/701/2018/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-9-701-2018 |
container_title |
Earth System Dynamics |
container_volume |
9 |
container_issue |
2 |
container_start_page |
701 |
op_container_end_page |
715 |
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1766346312687550464 |