Why countries need an international volcano response plan, Ctd

/

You may have heard that the Calbuco volcano in southern Chile erupted last week, five days after I wrote about the need for an international volcano response plan to deal with and prepare for the climate impacts of large volcanic events.  The Calbuco eruption is not a large volcanic event by historic standards, but NASA satellite data is starting to show that the eruption's sulfur dioxide may nonetheless have climate impacts because it was injected so high into the stratosphere:

The SO2 total is much lower than the recent Holuhraun eruption, which released about 11–12 teragrams, or 30 to 40 times more than Calbuco. “But the SO2 from Holuhraun was emitted over several months and was mostly confined to the lower troposphere, limiting its climate impacts,” Carn noted. “In terms of climate impacts, Calbuco is probably more significant due to the stratospheric SO2 injection.”

There have already been direct impacts felt in Chile and Argentina, but the potential indirect impacts of sulfur dioxide particles creating a cooling effect could play a disruptive role in upcoming climate change negotiations.  As countries move toward a binding greenhouse gas emission reductions treaty to deal with climate change, now is the time to consider how volcanic cooling effects should be discussed and planned for in the future.  

Image: NASA

Image: NASA

​

Why countries need an international volcano response plan

/
Why countries need an international volcano response plan

Among the topics covered by the April 11th 2015 issue of the Economist: the US presidential election, the Iran nuclear deal, terrorism in Kenya and Malaysia, and economic projections for the European Union.  It might be surprising, then, that the lead-in is an article on volcanoes and climate whose introductory setting is Indonesia in 1815.  That was the year Mount Tambora erupted.  The most powerful volcanic eruption of the past 500 years , Tambora released ash over a million square kilometers, and killed 60,000-120,000 people.  But the global impact was much more subtle.  By releasing sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, particles reflected sunlight away from the earth, cooling and drying the planet:

The year after the eruption clothes froze to washing lines in the New England summer and glaciers surged down Alpine valleys at an alarming rate.  Countless thousands starved in China's Yunnan province and typhus spread across Europe.  Grain was in such short supply in Britain that the Corn Laws were suspended...And no one knew that the common cause of all these things was a ruined mountain in a far-off sea.

Volcanoes don't feature much in modern discourse about climate change, natural disasters, and societal resilience.  Perhaps they should.  While there is a direct risk to people and property from lava and ash, that risk is minimized by relatively sophisticated early warning systems.  The real danger may be the indirect impacts on the global environment.

Read More