Volcanic Eruptions and Climate

Abstract:

We will review past and current work examining some novel aspects of the impact of explosive volcanic eruptions on climate. Among these are the impact on the occurrence of El Nino events, the potential introduction of false decadal climate predictability, complications in tree-ring data that may lead to an underestimate of the response of temperature-sensitive tree growth to very large past volcanic eruptions spanning the past millennium. We will discuss current work demonstrating that apparent multidecadal oscillations in past centuries likely reflect an artifact of pulses of volcanic activity during the pre-industrial era that project significantly onto the multidecadal (50-70 year) frequency band. This latter finding adds to the accumulating evidence against the existence of internal multidecadal oscillations in the climate system.