Impacts of climate change on the rise of volcanic columns: comparison of 1D and 3D plume model predictions and implications for climate-volcano feedback.
Abstract
Stratospheric volcanic aerosols exert a key control on climate variability at seasonal to multidecadal timescales. Many of the processes governing the climate response to a volcanic eruption are in turn affected by syneruptive weather conditions and climate, such as the rise of a volcanic column, the vertical distribution and the horizontal transport and lifetime of volcanic aerosols in the stratosphere, and dynamical feedbacks in the climate system.
In particular, a previous study suggested that ongoing climate change will hinder the ability of volcanic plumes to inject gases directly into the stratosphere and cool Earth's surface. However, this study used a 1D model of volcanic plume limited by: i) its simplistic parameterizations for the mixing between the plume and the atmosphere as well as water phase changes in the plume; ii) its inability to predict the details of the vertical distribution of volcanic gases into the atmosphere. In this study, we compare the impacts of climate change on volcanic plume rise as predicted by a 3D and 1D model of volcanic plume. We simulate volcanic eruptions in Iceland and in the Philippines spanning a large range of magnitude and rising either in the climate conditions of the late 20th century or projected climate for a high anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission trajectory (RCP8.5). We test whether the 1D and 3D models agree on how climate change will affect the rise height of volcanic plumes. In addition, we use the vertical distribution of gases predicted by the 3D model to precisely quantify how climate change will affect the flux of volcanic SO2 injected directly into the stratosphere. We discuss the implications of our results for climate-volcano feedbacks. Our work can directly inform climate model experiments addressing the impacts on climate of future volcanic eruptions. The large parameter space explored in our experiments also constitute a benchmark comparison of 1D and 3D models of volcanic plume, focusing on the ability of plume models to link eruption source parameters with volcanic gas distribution in umbrella clouds.- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFMGC13E1059C
- Keywords:
-
- 0370 Volcanic effects;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTUREDE: 4313 Extreme events;
- NATURAL HAZARDSDE: 8408 Volcano/climate interactions;
- VOLCANOLOGYDE: 8409 Atmospheric effects;
- VOLCANOLOGY