Reconstructing Volcanic Forcing of Climate: Past, Present and Future

Abstract:

Radiative forcing resulting from major volcanic eruptions has been a dominant driver of climate variability during Earth’s history. Including volcanic forcing in climate model simulations is therefore essential to recreate past climate variability, and provides the opportunity to test the ability of models to respond accurately to external forcing. Ice cores provide estimates of the volcanic sulfate loadings from past eruptions, from which radiative forcing can be reconstructed, with associated uncertainties. Using prior reconstructions, climate models have reproduced the gross features of global mean temperature variability reconstructed from climate proxies, although some significant differences between model results and reconstructions remain. There is much less confidence in the accuracy of the dynamical responses to volcanic forcing produced by climate models, and thus the regional aspects of post-volcanic climate anomalies are much more uncertain—a result which mirrors uncertainties in the dynamical responses to future climate change. Improvements in model’s response to volcanic forcing may be possible through improving the accuracy of the forcing data. Recent advances on multiple fronts have motivated the development of a next-generation volcanic forcing timeseries for use in climate models, based on (1) improved dating and precision of ice core records, (2) better understanding of the atmospheric transport and microphysical evolution of volcanic aerosol, including its size distribution, and (3) improved representations of the spatiotemporal structure of volcanic radiative forcing. A new volcanic forcing data set, covering the past 2500 years, will be introduced and compared with prior reconstructions. Preliminary results of climate model simulations using the new forcing will also be shown, and current and future applications of the forcing set discussed.