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Volcanic Winter

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  1. Volcanic Winter
    Fair, this was newer than many of the other papers however, of the ones I’ve personally read at least. There’s always variance with this sort of thing, and HTHH was very far from both conventionality and ease of measurement. It’s the first observed eruption of its type in modern history. Krakatau had some similarities but was ultimately 3x larger and fully magmatic, whereas this was more of a “super surtseyan” or phreatoplinian event. Krakatau destroyed its magmatic system and put a whole lot of fragmented rock and ash into the sky, HTHH blasted the ocean to the heavens. My point is the discrepancies, differing takes and opinions, and different analyses are totally reasonable for this eruption. They’ve still struggled to accurately constrain the size, initial estimates from geologists were as low as a VEI 4 though that never made any sense to me, and as high as 20 cubic kilometers which is much closer to Krakatau in size. Because the majority of the erupted material formed a curtain ignimbrite on the sea floor, measurement has been massively challenging. This makes estimating the gas release in the stratosphere trickier than it otherwise would’ve been. I’ve seen multiple revisions to the total sulfur load of this event, for example. And that normally tracks with the actual size, which has been in flux depending upon measurement methodology.
  2. Volcanic Winter
    This is also interesting, cold once again returning to China and the other side of the planet while we roast. Also been a theme lately it seems. https://watchers.news/2024/10/21/northern-china-breaks-21-mid-october-records-during-an-unusual-cold-spell-2024/
  3. Volcanic Winter
    @bluewave I had actually caught that paper showing Hunga Tonga actually had a slight cooling effect, apparently the water vapor was offset by sulfates and other volcanic particulates that do normally cool in more typical large eruptions. Such an unusual event, very large but very atypical - still the majority of erupted matter ended up under the ocean surface, yet still enough made it into the atmosphere to produce an effect. Very large event overall. That’s actually pretty scary, though the effect was small overall - I think it felt better to assume some of the warmth since Jan 22 was attributable to HTHH’s massive water vapor flux and not just a spike in global ocean / atmospheric heat. Ruang this year was a large and more typical explosive event, but size estimates of the two blasts have varied by the sources I normally go by. Initially I believed the two blasts to cumulatively just cross the VEI 5 threshold, but I’m not 100% on that and need to revisit. Still the plume definitely penetrated the stratosphere, but even a low 5 doesn’t normally perturb the climate much in a measurable way. At the largest estimate, a similar size to St Helens which did not have a measurable impact.
  4. Volcanic Winter
    Made it down to 39. It’s tough for me to appreciate warmth this deep into fall as it feels like a constant reminder of our progressively wrecked climatology. I also enjoy seasonality we’re supposed to have. I’m a hardcore winter guy and love hiking in snowcover, but fall hikes on cool days with the explosion of color on the changing leaves is extremely enjoyable. Some of these days have felt so hot in the sun by mid afternoon it feels like the beginning of September for a couple hours. The one saving grace has been the low dews allowing us to properly cool down at night. But now that’s intermingled into a growing drought, so yes thankfully it’s been a very wet year or this would’ve been more problematic.
  5. Volcanic Winter
    Down to 36 again for me, tying my fall low for the third time. The radiational cooling is significant at my location. I drive a few minutes east to the parkway and often warm up 6/7 degrees.
  6. Volcanic Winter
    Made it down to 38. Really seemed to vary quite a bit the past couple days with pockets of sharp radiative cooling and then areas where it wasn’t as much as you’d think.
  7. Volcanic Winter
    I have no expectations for this winter with everything I’ve read so far. Just hoping we can capitalize on whatever chances we may be fortunate enough to have, like last year. That’s probably all we can ask, seems like winter is starting early this year. And by winter I mean a couple days of cool weather followed by a week+ of ridging.
  8. Volcanic Winter
    36 again, tied with yesterday. Interesting variances. Wife and I are doing Iceland in December this year (normally we go in October or November), taking no chances with my winter weather .
  9. Volcanic Winter
    Down to 36 this AM. Moon was unreal around 4-5am today! Also snapped a nice pic of Orion, always been my favorite constellation since childhood. (Sorry, came out quite a bit more compressed uploaded than on my phone)
  10. Volcanic Winter
    Absolutely beautiful, I actually love the photos that are “just a hint” of Aurora contrasted with the normal sky. I think it’s super beautiful. I’m right in the line of 40N and they were originally saying the line of visibility would be near the Sussex border, so this is pretty amazing (again!). Enjoy guys, this is special!
  11. Volcanic Winter
  12. Volcanic Winter
    42 for a low this AM, coldest of the fall for me so far.
  13. Volcanic Winter
    Reminder I saw an Aurora this year already in Toms River… this solar maximum popping off.
  14. Volcanic Winter
    My wife and I were up in Hamburg this weekend for her birthday, making the most of the gloomy weather. Beautiful up there, hope to do some hiking in Sussex this winter.
  15. Volcanic Winter
    I’m returning from my summer hibernation. Missed you weenies! Seems we got some reaction upgrades too! Can’t wait to watch us flinging poo at each other all winter ❤️.
  16. Volcanic Winter
    Sorry guys, been rather busy. The sourcing I’ve been able to find states the first main eruption was .4 cubic kilometers, and the larger second blast on 4/30 was about .9. Together that’s a full VEI 5 event (that close together it’ll be taken as a single event, many big eruptions are multi phased). Together it’s just larger than St Helen’s 1.2 cubic kilometers. I’m still uncertain on the SO2 figures and resulting climate impact. This eruption was smaller than El Chichon which had over ~7Tg’s of SO2 ejected into the atmosphere as a slightly larger but very gassy VEI 5. I’m thinking ~1.5 - 2 Tg’s possible for the combined event, but I will look into and pull actual data in the future. That’s just a guess based on early figures. Remember a lot of sources are only showing the .4 Tg of the first blast, and the second was substantially larger. It was a substantial eruption. It’s not going to cause a deep volcanic winter of course, but it could cause some climate perturbations. I wouldn’t bet on a major effect though, IMHO. Usually low end VEI5’s aren’t major climate drivers unless they’re unusually gassy (like El Chichon erupting through the anhydrite of the Yucatán).
  17. Volcanic Winter
    Bumped to an EF4. They usually revise several times as the damage survey continues. Crazy storm regardless of rating.
  18. Volcanic Winter
    As best I understand it was due to engineering reasons, they determined the old F rating wind speeds were exaggerated for the damage they indicated (IE lesser winds produced equivalent damage). Hence they changed to the Enhanced Fujita. However I heard somewhere after the April 2011 super outbreak they began changing the criteria / damage thresholds that would allow a tornado to be classified as an EF5, and I heard essentially that the requirements are so strict as to be nearly impossible. It had lots of engineering arguments that are above me, but I thought it was interesting. They were suggesting we wouldn’t be seeing many EF5’s in the future with this new method solely for giving out an EF5 rating. Again, don’t know how ultimately valid this is but it was compellingly presented. I’ll look for the page I saw this on and link it if I can come across it. Has a lot of analysis of the mid to late 2010’s EF4’s that maybe could’ve been EF5 strength.
  19. Volcanic Winter
    Iowa tornado from today: This is one of the most impressive multi-vortex structures I've ever seen since El Reno.
  20. Volcanic Winter
    Was just thinking about when we’d see the next EF5. I had heard / read some criticisms that the NWS essentially redefined the damage necessary to classify a tornado as an EF5 as to be almost impossible. Basically it was stated that many historic EF and F5’s would be an EF4 with the new survey methods employed. Don’t know how valid that is, but the arguments I saw made sense in context and with examples. A few of the EF4’s since Moore would probably have been an EF5 with the less strict survey methods.
  21. Volcanic Winter
    About 3am facing the northern horizon. The green was very visible to the naked eye, and there was a faint pink / purple hue to space in the area it developed in the picture.
  22. Volcanic Winter
    A little backyard Aurora action??? I’m pretty blown away, but then again given the intensity of the solar storm it’s not even that surprising. During the 1859 Carrington Event, aurorae were visible all the way down to the Caribbean.
  23. Volcanic Winter
    @snowman19 When do you foresee the PDO actually shifting? Do you think we stay predominantly -PDO for a while or do you think a shift may happen within several years?
  24. Volcanic Winter
    The larger eruption I'm hearing was 0.94 cubic kilometers, combining with the earlier 0.40 cubic kilometers of the eruption on the 17th, this event is a clear VEI 5 overall and actually larger than St Helens in 1980, though that erupted 1.2 cubic kilometers in one sustained eruption. Still, this is a very, very significant event. Usually one eruption per decade will reach VEI 5 levels.
  25. Volcanic Winter
    And just to give a sense of how insane the VEI scale and explosive volcanism in general gets, assuming Ruang hits a minimal VEI 5 of 1 cubic kilometer (St Helens was 1.2 cubic kilometer, much of that erupted laterally), it would have to further erupt 10x more volume to reach a minimal VEI 6 (around what Hunga Tonga did, and a little less than Pinatubo). From current levels (again assuming 1 cubic kilometer - a minimal VEI 5), it would have to erupt 100x more material to reach a VEI 7, 150x in the case of Tambora. To reach a ‘supereruption’ at VEI 8, it would need 1000x its current erupted volume. The Toba supereruption 75kya was 3500-5000x this hypothetical VEI 5 Ruang eruption.
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