Volcanic Winter

Seeing as I was born in the 80’s, I’m afraid not. Though I would take the colder winters in that period as a consolation prize. Seems like that period failed for different reasons than now, IMO.

I really miss tracking winter with you kooky kids. I should definitely enjoy each season for what it offers but I think this past winter did me in. We even went up to Danbury during the peak of the snow drought in Feb, got up in the hills and couldn’t find snow to save our souls. Not to mention it was like 50 degrees each day lol. Admittedly I’m a psycho that prefers hiking in winter conditions, and it’s tough following up multiple winter trips to Iceland back here, at least in our area without going too far away. Just hoping we have a better season this year, I’m like the opposite of a person who lives for the summer months hehe, ride or die give me cold and snow.

“Help me Snowbi Juan Niñobi, you’re my only hope.”

So what month(s) constitutes peak winter forcing considering any lag in atmospheric response to the ENSO state? My assumption would be mid fall, but just curious for any elaboration. Thanks.

Decent thunder and steady rain in Hillside right now. Back home down south will probably miss most of the goods today I think.

I’m here for a cooler to normal summer. Doesn’t have to be 90+ with dews at ‘pea soup’ levels to have enjoyable, sunny summer days. A lot of my dysphoria for our climate is due to the oppressive heat of recent years. Aside from that, within the past 20 years haven’t ‘cooler’ summers preceded a few of our better winters? Not implying a correlation, just noting from memory what I remember seeing.

Dec ‘09 had a monster snowstorm while I was living in Long Branch going to school. Often gets overshadowed by Boxing Day a year later, but that storm was a beast and I have equally vivid memories of it as Boxing Day. Really crying into my Lucky Charms that we have a decent winter this year…

I actually peaked at just over 43 as well, really crazy.

Up early today, it’s 44 degrees here! Checks calendar Ah, typical chilly June evening…

This is really wild (pun not intended). It is a very good idea to break out N95’s, KN95’s, or even a p100 if you have one of those, if you have to be outside.

Storms missed me down here, but happy you guys got something!

I actually cannot fathom that we’re now six months into 2023. Our shitshow of a winter still feels like yesterday, and now it’s only six months to my favorite month of the year (December). While I’m going to enjoy the summer months as best I can (though hoping we don’t have another protracted heat + dew streak, just give me dry + couple days of rain then repeat), I have to confess to already starting to day dream about next winter. It can’t be any worse, right? Maybe we luck with a high end moderate Niño and have a chance at a classic winter. Two back to back stinkers would simply be untenable. Regardless, enjoy the nice weather while we have it. I’ve already begun reading the tea leaves on other sub forums looking ahead.

My May average temp thus far is 59.2 degrees compared to a 2022 average of 62.9. Went as low as 36.5 degrees for an overnight low this month.

This is an imprecise way to illustrate this, but just to give an idea: Even THIS was too small for climate impacts St Helens 1980, minimal VEI 5.

The issue is volume, it’s just not enough material. Popocatepetl sits on the Trans Mexican Volcanic Belt and is very high altitude so it gets an easy assist with lobbing tephra into the stratosphere, 20,000 ft is only 3,000 ft higher than the summit of the volcano. While an uptick for this system (that’s been constantly active on a smaller scale for a while now), it’s still at best a VEI 3 level eruption from what I’ve seen, and you would need two orders of magnitude more tephra to produce climate effects. It’s worth noting that Popocatepetl has done VEI 5 level eruptions in recorded history, so it’s always possible the uptick in activity could escalate into something major but IMO it is unlikely. Shiveluch’s recent eruption was a small VEI 4 but was still not large enough, stitch ten of them together and you’re in the ballpark. Hunga Tonga was the correct size but deposited most of its material into the ocean despite the monstrous plume (which was primarily phreatic; steam). The scale gets really crazy. Three Hunga Tonga’s equals Novarupta or Krakatoa. 4-5 of those = Tambora (eruptions this massive happen somewhere around 2-3 times per millennium). Starting at VEI 3, each level of the scale is an order of magnitude larger. You want to be around a mid VEI 5 (roughly 5km^3 of tephra volume) to start to see climate impacts, modulated by the composition of the erupted magma. Eruptions can have greater or lesser sulfur concentrations, and sulfur is the primary driver of volcanic cooling. Edit: GeologyHub estimating the past three days of Popocatepetl = VEI 3 level. https://youtu.be/HtKh6CTtxwI

Down to 42 here in the sticks. The wildfire haze is a good approximation of the “dry fog” experienced throughout the LIA after the very large volcanic eruptions of the era. There are records where people were able to see sunspots with the naked eye. We haven’t seen a “LIA sized” eruption since Novarupta in Alaska, 1912. HTHH was comparable to Pinatubo (though without the significant volcanic winter, however it still may be having some level of impact through this year).

Woke up to 36 with dew at 30. Impressive.

Yeah I’m betting I’ll touch the 30’s tonight based on that. It’s already cooling steadily.

My AC’s been on since March . … I do have severe allergic rhinitis though, I can’t open the windows or my nasal passages turn to a cement brick.

40 this AM down here.

Caught up quite a few pages today going back to the April thread; seems the forecast for a cool May until the last 1-2 weeks has given way to a warmer forecast? What changed? Just curious.

Went down to 31 here this AM. Pretty impressive.

Seems an uptick not just in tornado frequency but also intensity over this area. I’m aware stronger ones have occurred in the past as well, but the frequency of EF 1 and 2 events seems higher. Most of our tornadoes are EF 0 spinups, sometimes low end / borderline 1’s. Add the EF3 to my southwest in 2021 and then that EF3 in the Delmarva recently. I still can’t believe the former looked like a legit deep south multi vortex wedge Definitely seems like an uptick in intensity. I have no data on this and may be incorrect but it also seems like we’re seeing more supercellular storms and not just the typical QLCS with associated spinups.

Man, a shutout super Niño with wall to wall warmth and no snow would be absolutely intolerable following this past winter. For now I’m going to assume we’ll fare better than this year. I should say, for my sanity.

This is accurate. Shiveluch was not large enough to impact the climate. Also, a recent paper revised the HTHH sulfur flux upward rather substantially but still not enough to do much in the way of downward forcing. Unfortunately HTHH is more likely to contribute to warming, a first for documented large explosive events. You really want to be around the 5Mt / Tg (a lot of literature reports in Teragrams) and upward range of SO2 release, injected into the stratosphere so it really needs to be a plinian event (20km plume and up) of course modulated somewhat by the differing tropopause with latitude. You really want to see around a mid level VEI 5 with a gas rich composition to get a measurable downward kick to surface temperatures. And the largest forcing is usually relegated to the same hemisphere as the eruption, although truly massive events (say mid VEI 6 and up) can cross hemispheres as evidenced by ice core data, suggesting impacts globally. This isn’t a hard and fast rule however and weather conditions / pressure patterns can have a big influence at the time of the event.