Volcanic Winter

No worries! Glad you saw it, excited to read through.

What were the stats on Feb ‘15 in the area? How BN was it?

Guys I’m not fully caught up in this thread, but I wanted to share this link: https://www.severe-weather.eu/global-weather/cold-anomaly-stratosphere-polar-vortex-volcanic-cooling-winter-influence-fa/ Again referencing the Hunga Tonga eruption, they’re talking about a significant stratospheric cooling event underway in the Southern Hemisphere. They’re saying that correlative history suggests this may cause stratospheric warming in the northern hemisphere along with negative NAO states and below normal surface anomalies in our neck of the woods. Check it out, interesting if nothing else.

If my Tempest is accurate, we’re clocking in at .48 down here in Toms River with rain that’s definitely tapering off. Good bit less than I was hoping for if there’s to be no or little further development. Was still raining hard when I left work a little while ago just outside EWR.

Heavier bands heading ENE at the moment through NJ.

Here in Ocean County, NJ we were on the lucky side with precipitation this August compared to what I’m seeing for some of you. However, most of this was from a couple pop up soakers that trained over the area; dumb luck. July was 1.32 inches. Here’s to hoping this system pans out.

Okay guys, now this is interesting: https://www.severe-weather.eu/global-weather/cold-anomaly-stratosphere-polar-vortex-volcanic-cooling-winter-influence-fa/ With respect to the massive stratospheric injection of water vapor by the Hunga Tonga eruption (~10% of the total that resides in the stratosphere normally, a huge quantity), we’ve been hearing that the greenhouse gas may produce a small surface warming anomaly. This stands counter to the ‘normal’ effects on the climate from large scale explosive volcanism, as typically sulphur and ash particulates are responsible for measurable surface cooling as is what happened after Pinatubo 1991 for a couple years. But we know HTHH was very sulphur poor (1/40th the loading of Pinatubo). However, I raised the question in the August thread about how this disruption to the stratosphere may impact the various oscillations as we head into northern hemispheric winter. This article finds correlation between the observed current stratospheric cooling in the Southern Hemisphere resulting from HTHH (check it out, it’s a MASSIVE anomaly right now) and northern hemispheric stratospheric warming. What happens when we have stratospheric warming in winter? Negative NAO leading to BN surface temps and improved storm tracks. This is correlative conjecture in looking at past instances of stratospheric cooling in the Southern Hemisphere, but it’s very interesting and cuts right to the heart of what I’ve been asking and speculating about. Thought you guys might find this interesting. Lock it in? SSW epic neg NAO 60 inch NYC snowstorms? Yes please. Of course this is speculation, and we’re more or less going to be learning in real time what its impacts will be, if any at all (though finding it unlikely to be nil), for our northern hemispheric winter.

There are ancient fault lines deep underground along the eastern seaboard from when we were stapled into Pangea. Every so often there’s a minor slippage of the otherwise dead faults and you get small intraplate quakes. There’s areas where very large intraplate quakes can happen but I don’t believe our area is at risk for that. Check out the 1811 New Madrid magnitude 7.1-8.1 earthquakes that occurred near the southern tip of Missouri. Massive, major quakes in an unusual location. Ancient fault from millions of years ago. Also interesting, the Appalachians were the Mesozoic Himalayas and were once every bit as tall if not taller, now of course little more than eroded remnant hills.

What caused 2010 to be so anomalously hot? What was the set up? Always when you post data, 2010 sticks out like a sore thumb. Bonkers.

You could say it was, *takes off glasses* Allsnow.

.46 inches at my home in Toms River. Not bad, I’ll take it. Feels like more now at work in Union.

This is why I’ve raised the question several times, but not wanting to be too forceful about inserting it unnaturally into the discussion here. The truth is volcanic climate disturbances are difficult to pinpoint already with respect to the normal cooling of a large, sulfur laden eruption. HTHH was something different with its tremendous water vapor greenhouse gas injection. A first in history. While a slight broad surface warming is now expected, I’m most interested in how this could be influencing the dynamics of the various oscillations and monsoons. Pinatubo caused jet stream disturbances along with lots of other atmospheric phenomena. But Pinatubo was a much more typical large explosive (magmatic) eruption. This was largely phreatomagmatic and heavily skewed toward a massive injection of water vapor with less ash and sulfur. I suspect this will be better determined in retrospect than in real time, what if any effect is had.

Yeah, it’s sort of uncharted territory. Many eruptions eject water (Pinatubo notwithstanding), but what HTHH put up there is unprecedented. Basic physics suggest some degree of warming in the absence of the volcanic particulates that normally cause cooling at large quantities. I’m just wondering how it may impact, influence, or otherwise “force” the overall patterns into one direction or another. I guess that’s not something we generally know, owing to the rarity of this type of event. Volcanic Winters are already uncommon, though not exactly rare (in recent times at least 1-2 per century, sometimes quite a few more including smaller magnitude events). A “Volcanic Summer” is entirely uncharted territory, outside of ancient flood basalt eruptions that are orders of magnitude larger than anything in historic times that contribute to runaway warming from CO2 over hundreds of thousands of years (such as the Permian Mass Extinction / Siberian Traps). That’s something else entirely though. It’s intriguing though, at least for me (as the forum’s resident volcanophile with a healthy interest in their potential climate impacts).

It’s really fascinating how locked in some patterns have become since 2016. Bluewave, do you think we’ll see the return of the “cold November warm to very warm December?” I’m not reviewing any data at the moment but my recollection is that we’ve had several cool to cold Novembers in that timeframe, and I remember several forecasters going all in on a very cold December last year after the cool Nov only to be busted by incredible Dec warmth. Again. I have to go back to Hunga Tonga for a second, because it’s the big variable that’s changed since last year. We now know it injected about 10% of the total water vapor that resides in the stratosphere up there in an instant (without the accompany sulphur flux which would counterbalance that and normally cause cooling at this size), and I’m wondering what kinds of influence that may have on the normal ebb and flow of the various oscillations that make up our weather patterns. Of course, water vapor is a greenhouse gas, but I don’t know enough of the physics here to offer anything other than “should warm things up a bit, no?” IE what I’m asking is basically, do we think this could influence the likelihood of blocking? Or have any forcings on the EPO or PNA, etc? We know Pinatubo affected the jets after 1991 but that was largely from sulphur loading and other particulates that were largely underrepresented in the Hunga Tonga eruption despite its size (all things considered from a climatological perspective this is a unique event in recorded history with the largest observed influx of water vapor at one time into the stratosphere). It also may be influencing some of the things we’re seeing this summer, and I can’t wait to read any retrospective analyses about it. Aside from all that, I would give anything to get another epic winter of years past, and just my personal gut feeling is that those are quickly becoming extinct. I hope I’m wrong.

So how much snow is that? With the sun beginning to angle down does that mean this could overperform?

The system that moved through this morning was rather intense down by me. Couple cracks of thunder that shook the house and felt right above us. Tempest recorded it as a strike within 0-2 miles while almost everything else was more distal. Not much wind or any severe metrics, but there were a few serious cracks of thunder. .6 inches of rain too Nice event though, we needed it.

I’ll volunteer for Kamchatka. Some very fascinating volcanoes there. I’m better built for the cold than the heat.

I’m just outside Newark while at work and I concur 100%. Is it winter yet?

Incredible presentation on radar with the boundaries present. Been sitting right over me for eons now.

Sorry Snowman, just saw your tag. Yes, HTHH was an odd one, to say the least. On sheer explosive force alone it was unmatched back to Krakatau in the 1880’s (a moderately large VEI6 with surface cooling in the following years from volcanic aerosols). On volume, I’ve seen estimates that put it as a mid range VEI5 (5-8km^3) up to a decently sized VEI6 (~20km^3). Both, but especially the further you go toward the higher volume estimates are significant enough to produce volcanic cooling. The anomaly with HTHH is that it simply didn’t inject enough SO2 relative to its size and relative to similar eruptions, such as Pinatubo in 1991. That event put something like 40 times the amount of SO2 into the stratosphere and had a marked cooling effect for the the following several years. Some of the super storms in this time period, such as March 1993 are considered possibly linked to the eruption’s effects. There are other volcanic aerosols, but sulfur load in the stratospheric aerosol veil is the main or strongest component of volcanic cooling from a large eruption. It’s not a long duration effect (normally) as the sulfur reacts and eventually works itself out over the following couple years, largely ending the effect. Even stranger, HTHH put about 58,000 Olympic sized swimming pools of water vapor as high as the mesosphere, and I’m hearing the total amount added is something like 10% of the total that normally resides up in the stratosphere. That is *massive.* So yes, HTHH may end up having a paradoxical surface heating effect which would be the first time such an event happened in recorded modern history. After the initial large eruption the day before the final climactic blast to ~58km, the volcanic conduit was inundated with seawater at just the perfect depth to act as a pressure cooker to eject an enormous amount of water up above. It’s really very fascinating. These sorts of eruptions may not leave much of a trace in the long term records the way large ignimbrite eruptions do on land, so we may not even really understand how frequently they occur. Fascinating stuff all around. In short, this eruption was just about large enough to have some measurable downward forcing of surface temperatures, but what should’ve been the typical sulfur flux apparently reacted or leached into the ocean instead. So we’re left with a large eruption that could, warm things up? Very interested to find out when all is said and done. One last note, in one of the published bits of information I read that the huge water vapor influx may help reduce the level of atmospheric methane, which could offset the expected warming to some degree. I’m unaware of how that would work, exactly, but it’s interesting. Here’s a good source about volcanic cooling relative to 1991 Pinatubo: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/1510/global-effects-of-mount-pinatubo The mechanisms are similar for other large eruptions, though every volcano and eruption is unique and even things such as a local weather at the time can influence how climate forcings are felt later on. The most powerful “volcanic winter” of modern history is no doubt Tambora in 1815, leading to the serious climate anomalies of 1816. Highly recommend searching / reading about this if you’re intrigued. We’re talking a VEI 7 at over 100km^3 of tephra. So large it’s almost incomprehensible. And it wasn’t that long ago. Unlikely to see one again in our lifetimes, but one never knows! Chiles - Cerro Negro in South America is looking pretty scary over the past decade and especially the past several months. Large volcanic edifice with a likely evolved, silicic magma chamber that hasn’t apparently erupted in thousands of years. It’s looking like one might be coming. Might be, this stuff is tea leaves until it’s more or less imminent. But it could potentially be of the size and power that would do some interesting things to the climate, so it’s one I’m keeping an eye on. Reminds me a lot of the period before Pinatubo erupted, when they recognized the danger of the sleeping giant next door and gradually began to prepare. It may do nothing, of course. You guys are likely more accurate predicting the patterns and teleconnections for next winter than anyone trying to predict this stuff lol.

What ultimate influence will this have on our winter patterns / temps / snowfall chances? I’m not extremely well read on the Indian Ocean Dipole. Thanks!

HTHH only released about 400,000 tons of sulphur, most of what would’ve normally been released into the atmosphere leached and reacted into the ocean instead. Pinatubo released 19 million tons. The influence of volcanic ash and water vapor having an effect? Definitely. But the sulphur load was not high enough for a direct climate effect, or at least not one that’s easily measurable. Here’s a paper on it showing Pinatubo at 17Mt, but figures vary across sources. I’ve seen estimates up to 20Mt for Pinatubo. https://pubs.usgs.gov/pinatubo/self/ Note that it lists the volume of the eruption at 5km^3 which is a DRE value (dense rock equivalent), to get the more usually given tephra value it’s multiplied by 2.5 which produces a small VEI 6 eruption (which of course is a very large event overall, just on the lowest end of the 6 scale). Edit: See here as well https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/natural-disasters/amp/sulphur-dioxide-from-caribbean-volcano-reaches-india-wmo-confirms-76547 The VEI 4 2021 eruption of Soufriere in the Caribbean released about 600,000 tons of SO2, which is more than HTHH. VEI 4’s do not typically cool the climate, that begins more at the high end of VEI 5 with commensurately high sulphur releases, which for several reasons HTHH lacked. All of this is not to say HTHH isn’t currently affecting the climate; it almost certainly is. This one’s just complicated, and I’m very curious to read a retrospective analysis in a year or two.

It was very large with estimates of a high VEI 5 to low 6 (about 6km^3 of material up to 15ish or so km^3). Pinatubo was roughly 11 - 12 km^3, a low end 6. But both Novarupta in 1912 and Krakatau in 1886 were up to 30km^3 of material, and Tambora in 1815 was an enormous VEI 7 with over 100km^3 of volcanic material. It was a very, very large event with respect to modern times, but it is handily eclipsed going back a hundred to a couple hundred years. The absolute highest value for HTHH I’ve seen backed by a paper was about 20km^3, but that appears to be a high end outlier. And to reiterate, it was quite sulphur poor as the majority of SO2 leached into the ocean instead of being blasted into the stratosphere where it would have a cooling effect. Only about 1/40th of the stratospheric SO2 release of Pinatubo was measured, and Pinatubo reduced temperatures by about 1-2 degrees F (and also masked sea level rise by quite a bit, a separate but equally interesting topic to research. Edit: added a link to an article about this at the end). There are other volcanic particulates than can induce cooling that HTHH released, but I’m more intrigued by the massive release of water vapor. That is not typical and as mentioned could have a warming effect. Regardless, some instability in the climate system upwards or downwards with respect to temperature and patterns seems to be a given. edit: Here is an article written by a university professor regarding Pinatubo’s influence on the oceans. It’s very fascinating. https://www.volcanocafe.org/when-pinatubo-turned-the-tide/

Recently upgraded to a high VEI 5 to potentially a 6, it’s about at the size where a real climate impact is possible. However, it only released a fraction of the sulphur load into the stratosphere that Pinatubo did, as most of it apparently leached / reacted into the ocean instead. Still, there are more volcanic particulates involved and there have been documented volcanic sunsets around the globe including in the northern hemisphere. It’s just odd that normally an eruption of this size, AFAIK, generally keeps its effects within the same hemisphere. Perhaps because the column reached, absurdly, into the mesosphere? A geophysicist/volcanologist I follow believes it will / and is currently impacting the climate system. I’m curious to see if anything is ultimately linked to it. Pinatubo caused a significant impact for the following several years in the early - mid 1990’s but was far more sulphur rich.

I hit 47.9 down south here last night. Pretty insane, actually.