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The effect of major volcanic eruptions on sulfate aerosol concentrations and chemical reactions in the atmosphere. Major volcanic eruptions have an overwhelming effect on sulfate aerosol concentrations in the years when they occur: eruptions ranking 4 or greater on the Volcanic Explosivity Index inject SO 2 and water vapor directly into the stratosphere, where they react to create sulfate ...
This cooling effect on the ocean surface usually lasts for several years as the lifetime of sulfate aerosols is about 2–3 years. [1] However, in the subsurface ocean the cooling signal may persist for a longer time and may have impacts on some decadal variabilities, such as the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). [1] [2]
The conversion of sulfur dioxide to sulfuric acid, which condenses rapidly in the stratosphere to form fine sulfate aerosols. A volcanic winter is a reduction in global temperatures caused by droplets of sulfuric acid obscuring the Sun and raising Earth's albedo (increasing the reflection of solar radiation) after a large, sulfur-rich, particularly explosive volcanic eruption.
Aerosols have a cooling effect on the earth's atmosphere, and global dimming has masked the extent of global warming experienced to date, with the most polluted regions even experiencing cooling in the 1970s. [1] [6] Global dimming has interfered with the water cycle by lowering evaporation, and thus has probably reduced rainfall in certain ...
The volcanic winter of 536 was the most severe and protracted episode of climatic cooling in the Northern Hemisphere in the last 2,000 years. [1] The volcanic winter was caused by at least three simultaneous eruptions of uncertain origin, with several possible locations proposed in various continents. Modern scholarship has determined that in ...
The cooling period is reproduced by current (1999 on) global climate models that include the physical effects of sulfate aerosols, and there is now general agreement that aerosol effects were the dominant cause of the mid-20th century cooling. At the time there were two physical mechanisms that were most frequently advanced to cause cooling ...
Estimates of how much aerosols affect cloud cooling are very important, because the amount of sulfate aerosols in the air had undergone dramatic changes in the recent decades. First, it had increased greatly from 1950s to 1980s, largely due to the widespread burning of sulfur -heavy coal, which caused an observable reduction in visible sunlight ...
Episodic explosive eruptions represent the principal perturbation to stratospheric aerosol (though the atmospheric effects of sulfur degassing associated with continental flood basalts might well be more profound). In the troposphere, the picture is less clear but a significant part of the global tropospheric sulfate burden may be volcanogenic ...