Title:
"Modeling the climatic effects of large explosive volcanic eruptions: Current status and new challenges”
Abstract:
Large explosive volcanic eruptions are a major natural driver of climate variability at interannual to multidecadal time scales and the wildcard in the future development of Earth’s climate. They are also unique natural experiments that provide unprecedented insights into many climate change processes. Understanding how the climate system responds to volcanic forcing can not only test our understanding of these processes but also advance our ability to interpret past records. Our current understanding of the climatic response to volcanic forcing is however limited as large uncertainties affect both the observational records, due to the limited number of observations, and the non-robust dynamical responses simulated by different climate models. The lack of agreement between model results is crucially determined by differences in models' characteristics and uncertainty in the eruption details and background climate as well as uncertainties in aerosol microphysics and transport. The multiple and varied nature of these factors prevents their contribution to uncertainty from being distinguished within existing transient simulations or non-coordinated multi-model experiments. For this reason, current international model intercomparison activities have been established. In the talk I will give an overview about them and the current understanding of the volcanic impact on climate and recent challenges field linking them to my own work. Exemplary the early 19thcentury and the impact of a potential future eruption will be discussed in more detail.