Are strong volcanic eruptions important for decadal climate predictions? A historical perspective based on MPI-ESM ensemble simulations

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• Davide Zanchettin (University of Venice)
• Wednesday 20 May 2015, 14:15-15:15
• Unilever Lecture Theatre, Department of Chemistry.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Dr Amanda Maycock.

Numerical climate simulations suggest that strong tropical volcanic eruptions have the potential to induce dynamical responses in the coupled ocean-atmosphere system on decadal and even longer time scales. In this talk I will illustrate different aspects of post-eruption decadal climate evolution in several historical, paleo and idealized climate simulations performed with the Max-Planck-Institute Earth system model. In particular, I will show how background climate conditions can modulate the strength of the feedbacks initiated by the imposed volcanic forcing and activate different decadal response mechanisms. I will discuss how uncertainties on both forcing and background conditions complicate the assessment of simulated decadal climate responses to strong tropical volcanic eruptions and, consequently, the predictability of decadal climate evolutions after major volcanic events. I will conclude my talk with a brief overview on ongoing and planned modeling activities within the “Model Intercomparison Project on the climatic response to Volcanic forcing”, showing how they will help to identify the causes that limit robust post-eruption simulated behavior across state-of-the-art coupled climate models.

This talk is part of the Centre for Atmospheric Science seminars, Chemistry Dept. series.

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