Bethke, Ingo and Outten, Stephen and Ottera, Odd Helge and Hawkins, Ed and Wagner, Sebastian and Sigl, Michael and Thorne, Peter (2017) Potential volcanic impacts on future climate variability. Nature Climate Change, 7. pp. 799-805. ISSN 1758-678X

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Abstract

Volcanic activity plays a strong role in modulating climatevariability. Most model projections of the twenty-first century,however, under-sample future volcanic effects by not repre-senting the range of plausible eruption scenarios. Here,we explore how sixty possible volcanic futures, consistentwith ice-core records5, impact climate variability projections ofthe Norwegian Earth System Model (NorESM)under RCP4.(ref. 7). The inclusion of volcanic forcing enhances climatevariability 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-icevariability, the local-scale effects of which are detectable when quantifying the time of emergence. These results highlight theimportance and feasibility of representing volcanic uncertaintyin future climate assessments.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	Climate and Earth system modelling; Climate-change impacts; Projection and prediction; Potential volcanic impacts; future climate variability;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Geography Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Institutes > Irish Climate Analysis and Research Units, ICARUS
Item ID:	10797
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3394
Depositing User:	Peter Thorne
Date Deposited:	20 May 2019 17:10
Journal or Publication Title:	Nature Climate Change
Publisher:	Nature Publishing Group
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	https://www.nature.com/nclimate/
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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