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Estimates of volcanic-induced cooling in the Northern Hemisphere over the past 1,500 years

Abstract

Explosive volcanism can alter global climate, and hence trigger economic, political and demographic change1,2. The climatic impact of the largest volcanic events has been assessed in numerous modelling studies and tree-ring-based hemispheric temperature reconstructions3,4,5,6. However, volcanic surface cooling derived from climate model simulations is systematically much stronger than the cooling seen in tree-ring-based proxies, suggesting that the proxies underestimate cooling7,8; and/or the modelled forcing is unrealistically high9. Here, we present summer temperature reconstructions for the Northern Hemisphere from tree-ring width and maximum latewood density over the past 1,500 years. We also simulate the climate effects of two large eruptions, in AD 1257 and 1815, using a climate model that accounts explicitly for self-limiting aerosol microphysical processes3,10. Our tree-ring reconstructions show greater cooling than reconstructions with lower spatial coverage and based on tree-ring width alone, whereas our simulations show less cooling than previous simulations relying on poorly constrained eruption seasons and excluding nonlinear aerosol microphysics. Our tree-ring reconstructions and climate simulations are in agreement, with a mean Northern Hemisphere extra-tropical summer cooling over land of 0.8 to 1.3 °C for these eruptions. This reconciliation of proxy and model evidence paves the way to improved assessment of the role of both past and future volcanism in climate forcing.

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Figure 1: New tree-ring reconstructions of NH extra-tropical land (40°–90° N) summer temperature anomalies (with respect to 1961–1990) since AD 500.
Figure 2: Summer cooling following Samalas and Tambora eruptions.

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Acknowledgements

O. Churakova (Sidorova), J.-L. Edouard, R. Hantemirov and Y. Zhang contributed millennium-long chronologies. V.P. was supported by a grant from the LABEX L-IPSL, funded by the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche under the ‘Programme d’Investissements d’Avenir’ (Grant no. ANR-10-LABX-18-01) and benefited from the IPSL CMIP data access PRODIGUER. S.B. was supported by the EU-FP7 StratoClim project (grant agreement 603557).

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M.S., M.K., C.C. and S.G. designed the study with input from V.P., S.B., J.G., B.H.L., C.O., M.B. and V.M.-D. S.G. and C.C. performed climate reconstructions; M.K., S.B., V.P. and N.L. compiled ice-core data for SO2 yields estimation, designed the experiments and ran the microphysical and GCM models. All authors contributed to discussion and writing.

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Correspondence to Markus Stoffel.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Stoffel, M., Khodri, M., Corona, C. et al. Estimates of volcanic-induced cooling in the Northern Hemisphere over the past 1,500 years. Nature Geosci 8, 784–788 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2526

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