Volcanic Winter

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.

I should clarify what I meant by that. Even the most extreme form of eruption that hasn’t occurred on earth since the Colombia River Basalts 16 mya takes a very long time to warm the planet via volcanic CO2 release, therefore whatever dumb thing this JB is stating on Twitter about “underwater volcanoes releasing CO2” and warming the planet from it makes little sense. Explosive, large eruptions cool the planet as we know but usually only on short term time scales. Only incomprehensibly large and long duration flood basalt events that form large igneous provinces release enough CO2 to warm the planet, and those take place over thousands to millions of years. Flood basalts occur when a new hotspot is birthed by the head of a mantle plume breaching the surface. Some feel the next continental flood basalt may occur under the Virunga plateau (Nyiragongo) hundreds of thousands to millions of years from now. Flood basalts are more common when the continents are in a ‘supercontinent’ configuration as it’s easier for massive amounts of thermal energy to be contained as magma melt under the surface without erupting (necessary to get the enormous quantities of magma seen in flood basalts). Africa today though is probably large and thick enough to generate a small flood basalt in the future. Regardless and overall, “underwater volcanoes” makes no sense as a driver of current warming. For reference on the scale of these events, one of the largest flood basalts that formed the Ontong Java Plateau in the Cretaceous was thought to have an eruption rate of something like 15km^3 per year, which is essentially a Laki eruption every single year. The 18th century Laki eruption in Iceland killed ~20% of Iceland’s population, an enormous amount of livestock, and choked a massive number of people in England and Northern Europe on volcanic gasses. Easy to imagine flood basalts as major extinction events that poison the troposphere after putting this into perspective. Laki was a horrific eruption and nothing close to that sized effusive event has occurred since and is analogous to a miniature, year long flood basalt eruption.

Wow, BlueWave. Don’t think I would’ve expected that at all. The temp profile right now is more what I consider enjoyable for April.

Yup, I had next to no rain at all. We seemed to suck on virga for a bit and things got damp, but no measurable rain fell. Definitely feels like we’re starting to dry out around here.

Copying a post I made on Reddit regarding the magnitude of the Shiveluch eruption: Apparently a professor stated it released about .2 Tg (teragrams) of SO2, which is about half of the Soufriere VEI4 from 2020-21. Update: Apparently this figure is being revised up to .36 Tg, which is a substantial increase. I'll try to get a source and update this comment later. Just from that alone, this could be a high VEI 3 to low end / borderline VEI 4. That's just a guestimate based off the SO2 release which may be inaccurate for various reasons (could be especially gas laden or even the opposite). Also going off another recent eruption, Calbuco in 2015, which released .295 Tg and had a volume of .27 km3 which is a VEI 4. —— So IMO we’re looking at a VEI 4 considering the revised sulfur figure. Pretty large event all things considered, though small to impart any climate impact which was also true of Soufriere which had a similar sulfur release to the revised figure. Perhaps we’ll get another large eruption this year? Keeping eyes on a few systems, though there’s never a guarantee any particular one will go big. Just for a point of comparison, Pinatubo 1991 released ~20 Tg of sulfur. Laki in the late 18th century was over 100, though not all of that massive quantity reached the stratosphere as the eruption was predominantly effusive though it did have explosive components, and I theorize a lot of gas was still lofted high enough to hit the climate system riding on co-ignimbrite plumes and intense thermal updrafts from the insane heat of the massive eruption. Still, much of that insane sulfur flux stayed trapped in the troposphere and ultimately killed a large quantity of people in the UK as it migrated, and it killed something like ~20% of Iceland’s population along with an enormous quantity of livestock. It was a truly terrible weather event that’s worth reading about.

Unfortunately this is probably too small to cause a climate impact by itself, but I want to caution I haven’t really had a chance to deep dive the info on this event today while at work. My thinking, very preliminarily, is at max a VEI 4 which is an order of magnitude below the sort of eruptions that impart climate impacts favorable for our purposes. We’ll see though! Looks pretty sizable! But it’s crazy how much explosive eruptions scale upwards, and duration is equally important to overall plume width and height. Actually Hunga Tonga was the most intense eruption since the VEI 7 Hatepe eruption from the Taupo supervolcano in New Zealand, circa ~200CE. Despite “only” being a borderline high end 5 to 6, the moment to moment intensity of the short hour long main eruption sequence was similar to a VEI 7! Most people don’t realize this. Had HTHH lasted longer, it would’ve been a substantially larger eruption. It was very much like a large natural nuke detonation and was over and done extremely quickly.

Mauna Loa and Kilauea are linked deep underground as they “share” the Hawaiian Hotspot. They’re also very spatially close to one another as Kilauea is sort of a very hot wart on the flank of Mauna Loa, and there are theories that suggest the activity of one impacts the activity of the other. There have been instances of seismic activity at one registering a change at the other, without being familiar with the article something along these lines is probably what they’re talking about. But assuming mainstream news it’s likely an exaggerated interpretation meant to sound interesting to the general audience.

Shiveluch just produced a spectacular sub-plinian eruption caused by the collapse or partial collapse of its growing lava dome (which has been its current mode of activity for quite a while). https://www.reddit.com/r/Volcanoes/comments/12ieudx/shiveluch_volcanic_eruption_11042023_kamchatka/ https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/shiveluch/news/208903/Shiveluch-volcano-Kamchatka-massive-eruption-with-huge-ash-cloud-up-to-16-km-heavy-ash-rain-darkened.html The second link goes to VolcanoDiscovery where you can see multiple reports on the eruptive sequence. This type of behavior is what caused the VEI 4 Soufriere eruption two years ago in the Caribbean. Definitely a spectacular, voluminous blast. It could be up to VEI 4 level, but I’ll have to see more footage and analysis, especially of the duration of the event. Typically lava dome collapse eruptions are temporally brief events (often, but not always). However, if it was only a partial collapse that caused this eruption, more could follow.