Potential volcanic impacts on future climate variability
Volcanic activity plays a strong role in modulating climatevariability. Most model projections of the twenty-first century,however, under-sample future volcanic effects by not repre-senting the range of plausible eruption scenarios. Here,we explore how sixty possible volcanic futures, consistentwith...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Nature Publishing Group
2017
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://mural.maynoothuniversity.ie/10797/ https://mural.maynoothuniversity.ie/10797/1/nclimate3394.pdf |
| Summary: | Volcanic activity plays a strong role in modulating climatevariability. Most model projections of the twenty-first century,however, under-sample future volcanic effects by not repre-senting the range of plausible eruption scenarios. Here,we explore how sixty possible volcanic futures, consistentwith ice-core records5, impact climate variability projections ofthe Norwegian Earth System Model (NorESM)under RCP4.(ref. 7). The inclusion of volcanic forcing enhances climatevariability on annual-to-decadal timescales. Although decades with negative global temperature trends becomeā¼50%more commonplace with volcanic activity, these are unlikely to be able to mitigate long-term anthropogenic warming.Volcanic activity also impacts probabilistic projections of global radiation, sea level, ocean circulation, and sea-icevariability, the local-scale effects of which are detectable when quantifying the time of emergence. These results highlight theimportance and feasibility of representing volcanic uncertaintyin future climate assessments. |
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