Researchers study the link between volcanoes and the Earth's cooling

by Rich Bowden - Jan 6 2009, 20:54

Massive volcanoes during the past 500 years cooled the Earth's tropics but the effect may have been masked during the 20th century by global warming, a team of Scottish and U.S. researchers has found.

Img: Ijen volcano, East Java, Indonesia. Credit: flydime/flickr

In a study published in the current issue of Nature Geoscience, teams from Columbia University, New York, and the universities of Edinburgh and St. Andrews have become the first to catalogue how the tropics reacted to massive volcanic eruptions."This is significant because it gives us more information about how tropical climate responds to forces that alter the effects solar radiation," said lead author of the study Rosanne D'Arrigo, a scientist at the Tree Ring Lab at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.The researchers, who also included Rob Wilson of Lamont and the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, and Alexander Tudhope of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, analysed a wide range of regions to establish the effect of volcanoes including ice cores and corals from the Earth's tropical regions.Gathered data showed significant coolings following two events, a tropical volcanic eruption in 1809, the exact location of which is unknown, and the the 1815 Tambora eruption in Indonesia, which was one of the biggest eruptions ever recorded.However, the researchers found that similar eruptions during the 20th century have had less climactic effects due to the masking of global warming."Particularly warm decades may have partially overridden the cooling effect of some volcanic events," said D'Arrigo, adding that less reliable instrumental records exist from before this time. "This study provides some of the first comprehensive information about how the tropical climate system responded to volcanism prior to the instrumental period," she added.

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