Disproportionately strong climate forcing from extratropical explosive volcanic eruptions

• Published in: Nature Geoscience
• Main Authors: Toohey, Matthew, Krüger, Kirstin, Schmidt, Hauke, Timmreck, Claudia, Sigl, Michael, Stoffel, Markus, Wilson, Rob
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: info:eu-repo/classification/ddc/333.7-333.9; ice core
• Online Access: https://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:122415

Extratropical volcanic eruptions are commonly thought to be less effective at driving large-scale surface cooling than tropi-cal eruptions. However, recent minor extratropical eruptions have produced a measurable climate impact, and proxy records suggest that the most extreme Northern Hemisphere cold period of the Common Era was initiated by an extratropical erup-tion in 536 ce. Using ice-core-derived volcanic stratospheric sulfur injections and Northern Hemisphere summer temperature reconstructions from tree rings, we show here that in proportion to their estimated stratospheric sulfur injection, extratropi-cal explosive eruptions since 750 ce have produced stronger hemispheric cooling than tropical eruptions. Stratospheric aero-sol simulations demonstrate that for eruptions with a sulfur injection magnitude and height equal to that of the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption, extratropical eruptions produce time-integrated radiative forcing anomalies over the Northern Hemisphere extratropics up to 80% greater than tropical eruptions, as decreases in aerosol lifetime are overwhelmed by the enhanced radiative impact associated with the relative confinement of aerosol to a single hemisphere. The model results are consistent with the temperature reconstructions, and elucidate how the radiative forcing produced by extratropical eruptions is strongly dependent on the eruption season and sulfur injection height within the stratosphere.