Potential Impact of Tonga Volcano Eruption on Global Mean Surface Air Temperature

汤加火山爆发对全球平均地表气温的影响预估

• The undersea volcano, located in the South Pacific island nation of Tonga, violently erupted from 14 to 15 January 2022. The Tonga volcano eruption has aroused extensive discussion in the climate change field. Some climatologists believe that this event will cause little effect on global climate change while others insist that it will trigger “the year without a summer” as the Tambora eruption did in 1815. How will the Tonga volcano eruption affect global climate change? Based on the indices of past volcanic eruptions and the eruption data of El Chichón volcano in 1982, we use a simplified radiation equilibrium model to quantify the stratospheric aerosol radiative forcing and the change in global mean surface air temperature (Ts) caused by the Tonga volcano eruption. The results show that the global average Ts will decrease by about 0.0315–0.1118°C in the next 1–2 years. The Tonga eruption will slightly slow down the global warming in a short period of time, but it will not change the global warming trend in the long term. In addition, we propose a generalized approach for estimating the impact of future volcanic eruption on global mean Ts.
2022年1月14–15日，南太平洋岛国汤加境内的海底火山猛烈喷发。这次火山爆发引起了气候学界的广泛讨论，有专家认为这次事件对全球气候变化的影响可以忽略不计，但也有专家认为汤加火山会像1815年坦博拉火山那样引发“无夏之年”，那么这次汤加火山爆发对气候的影响到底有多大呢？我们基于历史火山活动指数和可以参考的1982年埃尔奇琼火山爆发事件，利用简化的辐射能量平衡模型，对此次汤加火山爆发导致的平流层气溶胶辐射强迫及其对全球平均地表气温的影响进行了定量估算。结果表明：未来1–2年内全球平均地表气温可能下降0.0315–0.1118℃；汤加火山爆发会在短期内略微减缓全球变暖，但不会改变全球变暖的长期趋势。本文提出的这个简单估算方法亦可用于快速评估今后的火山爆发对全球平均地表气温的定量影响。中文全文请见https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/SyI1V5t86LTBCfr-CzutZw或上面Supplements.
• Fig. 1.  Aerosol optical thickness (τ) at the 0.55-μm wavelength in association with six different volcanic indices for the (a) Northern and (b) Southern Hemispheres in the past 150 years [from Robock and Free (1995)]. The zoomed-in panels on the right show details of the relationship during the 1982 El Chichón eruption.

Fig. 2.  Flow chart for estimating $\Delta {T_{\rm s}}$ caused by a future volcanic eruption.

•  [1] Forster, P., T. Storelvmo, K. Armour, et al., 2021: The Earth’s energy budget, climate feedbacks, and climate sensitivity. Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, V. Masson-Delmotte, P. Zhai, A. Pirani, et al., Eds., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, in press. Available at https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/#FullReport. Accessed on 25 January 2022. [2] Gregory, J. M., and T. Andrews, 2016: Variation in climate sensitivity and feedback parameters during the historical period. Geophys. Res. Lett., 43, 3911–3920.. [3] Hofmann, D. J., 1987: Perturbations to the global atmosphere associated with the El Chichón volcanic eruption of 1982. Rev. Geophys., 25, 743.. [4] Lamb, H. H., 1970: Volcanic dust in the atmosphere; with a chronology and assessment of its meteorological significance. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. London, Set. A, 266, 425–533.. [5] Lamb, H. H., 1977: Supplementary volcanic dust veil index assessments. Clim. Monit., 6, 57–67. [6] Lamb, H. H., 1983: Update of the chronology of assessment of the volcanic dust veil index. Clim. Monit., 12, 79–90. [7] Mitchell, J. M., 1970: A preliminary evaluation of atmospheric pollution as a cause of the global temperature fluctuation of the past century. Global Effects of Environmental Pollution: A Symposium, organized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Dallas, Texas, USA, December 1968, S. F. Singer, Ed., Springer Netherlands, 139–155. [8] Newhall, C. G., and S. Self, 1982: The volcanic explosivity index (VEI) an estimate of explosive magnitude for historical volcanism. J. Geophys. Res. Oceans, 87, 1231–1238.. [9] Robock, A., 2000: Volcanic eruptions and climate. Rev. Geophys., 38, 191–219.. [10] Robock, A., and M. P. Free, 1995: Ice cores as an index of global volcanism from 1850 to the present. J. Geophys. Res. Atmos., 100, 11,549–11,567.. [11] Robock, A., and M. P. Free, 1996: The volcanic record in ice cores for the past 2000 years. Climatic Variations and Forcing Mech-anisms of the Last 2000 Years, Berlin, Heidelberg, 533–546. [12] Sapper, K., 1917: Beiträge zur Geographie der tätigen Vulkane: Einleitung. D. Reimer, 133 pp. [13] Sapper, K., 1927: Vulkankunde. Englehorn Verlag, Stuttgart, Germany, 424 pp. [14] Sato, M., J. E. Hansen, M. P. McCormick, et al., 1993: Stratospheric aerosol optical depths, 1850–1990. J. Geophys. Res. Atmos., 98, 22,987–22,994.. [15] Shi, G. Y., 2007: Atmospheric Radiation. Science Press, Beijing, 402 pp. (in Chinese) [16] Simkin, T., and L. Siebert, 1994: Volcanoes of the World, 2nd ed. Geoscience Press, Tucson, Arizona, USA, 349 pp. [17] Simkin, T., L. Siebert, L. McClelland, et al., 1981: Volcanoes of the World. Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 232 pp. [18] Zhang, H., F. Wang, F. Wang, et al., 2022: Advances in cloud radiative feedbacks in global climate change. Scientia Sinica Terrae, 52, 400–417. . (in Chinese)
通讯作者: 陈斌, bchen63@163.com
• 1.

沈阳化工大学材料科学与工程学院 沈阳 110142

Potential Impact of Tonga Volcano Eruption on Global Mean Surface Air Temperature

Corresponding author: Hua ZHANG, huazhang@cma.gov.cn;
• 1. State Key Laboratory of Severe Weather, Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, China Meteorological Administration, Beijing 100081
• 2. Collaborative Innovation Center on Forecast and Evaluation of Meteorological Disasters, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing 210044
Funds: Supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017YFA0603502)

Abstract: The undersea volcano, located in the South Pacific island nation of Tonga, violently erupted from 14 to 15 January 2022. The Tonga volcano eruption has aroused extensive discussion in the climate change field. Some climatologists believe that this event will cause little effect on global climate change while others insist that it will trigger “the year without a summer” as the Tambora eruption did in 1815. How will the Tonga volcano eruption affect global climate change? Based on the indices of past volcanic eruptions and the eruption data of El Chichón volcano in 1982, we use a simplified radiation equilibrium model to quantify the stratospheric aerosol radiative forcing and the change in global mean surface air temperature (Ts) caused by the Tonga volcano eruption. The results show that the global average Ts will decrease by about 0.0315–0.1118°C in the next 1–2 years. The Tonga eruption will slightly slow down the global warming in a short period of time, but it will not change the global warming trend in the long term. In addition, we propose a generalized approach for estimating the impact of future volcanic eruption on global mean Ts.

汤加火山爆发对全球平均地表气温的影响预估

2022年1月14–15日，南太平洋岛国汤加境内的海底火山猛烈喷发。这次火山爆发引起了气候学界的广泛讨论，有专家认为这次事件对全球气候变化的影响可以忽略不计，但也有专家认为汤加火山会像1815年坦博拉火山那样引发“无夏之年”，那么这次汤加火山爆发对气候的影响到底有多大呢？我们基于历史火山活动指数和可以参考的1982年埃尔奇琼火山爆发事件，利用简化的辐射能量平衡模型，对此次汤加火山爆发导致的平流层气溶胶辐射强迫及其对全球平均地表气温的影响进行了定量估算。结果表明：未来1–2年内全球平均地表气温可能下降0.0315–0.1118℃；汤加火山爆发会在短期内略微减缓全球变暖，但不会改变全球变暖的长期趋势。本文提出的这个简单估算方法亦可用于快速评估今后的火山爆发对全球平均地表气温的定量影响。中文全文请见https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/SyI1V5t86LTBCfr-CzutZw或上面Supplements.
Reference (18)

/