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Potential volcanic impacts on future climate variability

Nature Climate Change volume 7, pages 799–805 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

Volcanic activity plays a strong role in modulating climate variability1. Most model projections of the twenty-first century, however, under-sample future volcanic effects by not representing the range of plausible eruption scenarios2,3,4. Here, we explore how sixty possible volcanic futures, consistent with ice-core records5, impact climate variability projections of the Norwegian Earth System Model (NorESM)6 under RCP4.5 (ref. 7). The inclusion of volcanic forcing enhances climate variability on annual-to-decadal timescales. Although decades with negative global temperature trends become ∼50% more commonplace with volcanic activity, these are unlikely to be able to mitigate long-term anthropogenic warming. Volcanic activity also impacts probabilistic projections of global radiation, sea level, ocean circulation, and sea-ice variability, the local-scale effects of which are detectable when quantifying the time of emergence8. These results highlight the importance and feasibility of representing volcanic uncertainty in future climate assessments.

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Figure 1: Historical and plausible future volcanic forcing.
Figure 2: Annual-mean GMST.
Figure 3: Decadal temperature means and trends.
Figure 4: Decadal means of large-scale climate indicators.
Figure 5: Time of emergence of anthropogenic GMST changes.

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Acknowledgements

We thank D. Mitchell, A. Kirkevåg, M. Toohey and D. Zanchettin for providing valuable input. This study was supported by the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, Research Council of Norway (229774) and UNINETT Sigma2 (nn9039k, ns9039k).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Uni Research Climate, Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, Bergen, 5007, Norway

    Ingo Bethke & Odd Helge Otterå

  2. Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center, Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, Bergen, 5006, Norway

    Stephen Outten

  3. Department of Meteorology, NCAS-Climate, University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6BB, UK

    Ed Hawkins

  4. Institute for Coastal Research, Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht, Geesthacht, 21502, Germany

    Sebastian Wagner

  5. Laboratory of Environmental Chemistry, Paul Scherrer Institute, Villigen, 5232, Switzerland

    Michael Sigl

  6. Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Bern, 3012, Switzerland

    Michael Sigl

  7. Department of Geography, Irish Climate Analysis and Research Units, National University of Ireland Maynooth, Maynooth, County Kildare, Ireland

    Peter Thorne

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Contributions

S.O., P.T. and I.B. developed the stochastic forcing model. S.W. and M.S. helped with the utilization and interpretation of the ice-core reconstructions. I.B., P.T., S.O. and E.H. conceived and designed the simulation experiments. E.H. performed the ToE analysis. All authors contributed to writing the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Ingo Bethke.

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Bethke, I., Outten, S., Otterå, O. et al. Potential volcanic impacts on future climate variability. Nature Clim Change 7, 799–805 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3394

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