Introduction and caveats
Two weeks ago Haiti suffered a devastating earthquake and a severe aftershock that killed several thousand people, followed by a tropical storm that greatly compromised recovery. Normally, these are events that would dominate MSM headlines but, instead, have been largely overshadowed by happenings in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, here and there, speculation about possible links between frequency and intensity of earthquakes and climate change reappeared, including mention of a 2013 book by Bill McGuire (Waking the Giant). These caused my geological BS hackles to rise.
I have been asked to add my thoughts upon this topic. This posed me with a dilemma. Seismology (the study of earthquakes) has been far from any area of my expertise, even though I have worked closely with oil company geophysicists whose speciality is closest to this subject. Also, when I was employed by the Saskatchewan Geological Survey the geologist in the adjacent office was tasked with assessing the Province’s subsurface for waste storage and disposal, and we would discuss our studies with each other. The relevance of this is that some locations (such as Denver, Colorado), where liquid wastes were pumped into the ground, are notorious for spawning earthquakes resulting from changes in underground fluid pressures. I also have thought much about the rate at which temperature changes migrate in the subsurface, a topic relevant to how changes in climate might influence the subsurface. Thus my expertise is limited and my opinions are potentially questionable by a more informed expert. [But when has this fact ever stopped me? I have history]. I also lived and worked in the San Francisco area for three years where you imbibe much earthquake lore and I experienced a few events, one of which scared the bejesus out of me.
Another problem is that I have not read McGuire’s 2013 book. However, it was preceded by a Guardian article (26 February, 2012) – “Climate change will shake the Earth”, which reads like a summary of the main points in the book – full of fire and brimstone prophesies. Death and destruction all round, all to be laid at the door of human induced climate change impacting the subsurface. Its message is clear, we will cause catastrophic geological harm unless we mend our ways. I am far from being convinced, except possibly in areas where thick glaciers have melted recently and even here opportunities for causing big earthquakes that would cause death and destruction to millions would seem to be somewhat limited.
Basics of earthquakes
Adjacent sides of a fault normally cannot move past each other because of irregularities, or asperities, along the fault surface – the fault is locked. Continued movement of opposing sides creates increasing stress and increasing strain energy along the fault plane. Strain increases until the accompanying stress rises sufficiently to break the asperity, and suddenly sliding along part of the locked part of the fault is possible. The stored energy is then released.
This elastic-rebound theory of earthquakes invokes a gradual build-up of strain and stress along locked fault planes, punctuated by episodes of sudden failure. It is estimated that around 10% of the released stress is released as seismic energy, whereas the majority powers the fracture growth within the fault or is converted into heat.
Upward deformation that might relieve the gradual build-up of strain energy is opposed by the overburden load. This load is supported at depth by both the solid rock and by the pressure within any fluid within fractures or other porosity. If the overburden pressure is reduced or increased it can stimulate seismicity. Cases in point are earthquakes caused by excessive groundwater removal or due to pumping fluid waste into the subsurface, due to changing subsurface fluid pressures.
Most earthquake foci on continents lie at depths of several kilometres, but foci associated with plate margins with descending tectonic slabs can lie at depths of up to 600 km. All lie at depths well beneath those affected by temperature changes resulting from present-day climate change. Rocks do not transmit temperature changes quickly. In fact, past climate changes going back to past ice ages can be detected in boreholes by temperature anomalies that are still slowly migrating downward from the surface.
Earthquakes and climate change
So will climate change, induced by humans or not, cause an increase in the frequency or the magnitude of earthquakes? Bill McGuire, volcanologist, Emeritus Professor of Geophysical and Climate Hazards, former member of the U.K. Government’s Natural Hazards Working Group and the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), contributing author to the 2011 IPCC Report on climate change and extreme events, &c., &c., says yes, yes, yes. He has done so in books, newspaper articles, radio, and on blog sites. Furthermore, his views are repeated often by those who wish to scare us with the perils of man-made climate change.
Is he to be believed? My view, partially due to prejudice, is both yes and no. Yes, where substantial thicknesses of glacial ice have disappeared as a result of warming since the Little Ice Age, especially in earthquake prone regions of the Earth; but no as a result of recent, or even expected, sea-level rises.
McGuire’s thesis
McGuire argues that rates of geological change, particularly the melting of glacial ice and coastal flooding by rising sea level, occurred most rapidly at the end of the last ice age and during the earliest part of the Holocene. These changes caused flexure of the crust and the unlocking of faults. He argues that rates of earthquake occurrence were greater then than more recently. I don’t know where he gets this information, perhaps this is explained in his book. McGuire is a volcanologist, he also argues that erupting volcanoes were more frequent and/or more violent at times when and where the crust was flexing. This should leave an identifiable record at the surface in the form of lava flows and ash deposits of that date, and a diminution of those materials during the later Holocene. I know of no published work reaching those conclusions but that may just be my ignorance.
Similar fast rates of change are believed by McGuire to be either happening today or are expected to occur in the immediate future as a result of man-made climate change. These changes should cause crustal deformation and changes in the frequency and severity of earthquakes and volcanism. This is, in his opinion, something to worry about.
Glacial melting and earthquakes
There is no question that the melting of ice sheets and glaciers, especially those of great thickness, will cause substantial changes in the deep subsurface. But the response is extremely slow. Commonly upward bobbing of the crust accompanied by lateral movements of the ductile Upper Mantle to fill the potential void beneath the upward moving crust both occur at rates compared to those at which fingernails grow.
We must also consider that glacial ice is not very dense compared with other geological materials. Ice has a density less than half that of most crustal rocks, so that removal of 1,000 m of ice is equivalent to the loss of much less than 500 m of rock. Of perhaps greater significance is the very fast rate that glacial ice can melt (compared with removal of most other geological materials).
Two locations have been identified as suffering more earthquakes as a consequence of ice melting. The first region is coastal Alaska, where valley glaciers have gone AWOL (shown by ground surveys by the US Geological Survey and aerial photography). However, like much of climate attribution “science” there is much to question here. The region is already earthquake-prone. I have now read more than several dozen papers and reports that claim an increase in earthquakes and attribute this to loss of glacial ice. But nowhere in my reading do I find statistics that would confirm such a link or even prove an increase in seismicity. After all, an earthquake, however caused, releases subsurface strain, commonly passing it along the fault plane to another locality not beneath an area of ice-loss. I am perfectly willing to accept a strong possibility that glacial melting could induce more earthquakes, but given how difficult or impossible it is to predict large earthquakes ahead of time, I cannot imagine how any increase in frequency or intensity can be calculated, let alone be attributed to ice loss and climate change.
There also is the possibility that increased strain and stress caused by ice melting is mostly relieved by micro-seismic events, in which case there would be no increase in more intense quakes that could cause damage and be felt. In fact large earthquakes might actually decrease.
Ice melting in Alaska is not just a recent phenomenon. I have visited Glacier Bay near Juneau. Apparently this huge bay was entirely ice choked to its entrance in the first part of the eighteenth century when the first Russian explorers sailed by not suspecting its existence. Now (or at least 20 years ago when I was there) most of the Bay is empty of ice, although many glaciers still flow into it (two of which are not retreating). [The whales and the falling ice masses at the termini of glaciers were spectacular. Mind-blowing in fact. I only wish the coastal fog would have abated so that we could have viewed it all from the air. I particularly wished to see the huge Malaspina Glacier, but sadly that was not to be].
The other region mentioned as suffering increased seismicity due to recent glacial ice loss is coastal Greenland. I know nothing about this, other than to note that the ice-free fringe of much of coastal Greenland must be largely due to earlier Holocene melting. Any increase of seismicity would be mainly the result of this earlier melting and not due to increased CO2 in the atmosphere.
Finally, it should be noted that if there is increased seismicity in Alaska and coastal Greenland these are areas of low to no population. If indeed seismicity is now increasing in areas losing glacial ice I would have expected the message to come from more populated seismic-prone areas like New Zealand or northern Japan. But then many glaciers in New Zealand refuse to obey climate heating rules and insist upon advancing at times.
Increased seismicity due to sea-level rise
Part of McGuire’s 2012 Guardian article is pure alarmist scaremongering:
“Across the world, as sea levels climb remorselessly, the load-related bending of the crust around the margins of the ocean basins might – in time – act to sufficiently “unclamp” coastal faults such as California’s San Andreas, allowing them to move more easily; at the same time acting to squeeze magma out of susceptible volcanoes that are primed and ready to blow.”
Perhaps at the end of the Pleistocene, when thick continental ice sheets melted and caused at least a 125m sea level rise, this extra loading might have caused crustal flexure severe enough to cause extra earthquake activity. But in otherwise aseismic regions this would have largely relieved any residual stresses present (however we must remember that the largest U.K. earthquake occurred near Colchester in 1884: a previously identified aseismic area). But we are only talking about crustal loading by addition of seawater due to climate change of, at most, a few millimetres a year. I cannot conceive of the Earth’s crust as being so weak as not to slowly accommodate to this minute change in loading. Thus any suggestion that the recent Haiti earthquake could be due to additional seawater loading resulting from climate heating is IMHO highly unlikely.
Seismicity as a consequence of crustal loading by water is definitely possible. The huge water reservoir behind the Aswan High Dam in Egypt (Lake Nasser), filled after 1971, to an average depth of around 25m -maximum depth 180m) has spawned numerous earthquakes, some above magnitude 4 on the Richter scale. However, the rate at which the subsurface beneath the reservoir was subjected to this additional loading is many magnitudes greater than any coastal flooding as a consequence of even the most extreme modelled rate of sea-level rise.
It’s about strength
The impression Bill McGuire gives is of the Earth’s crust being extremely weak and sensitive to even the slightest change in loading – even that produced by climate heating. Over parts of the Earth this could be true, but these areas already suffer from earthquakes and volcanoes, so a slight increase in activity would be difficult to recognise, let alone ascribe to climate change. In other areas the crust seems to be strong and few earthquakes occur. This affects areas where mass has been added, such as European river deltas where sediment has been dumped, yet the only earthquakes are very shallow and can be attributed to uneven settling. Similarly large masses of limestone and chalk have been removed from the Mendips, North-western Kent and the Island of Portland. Earthquakes? None that I know of. And what of the 600+ marble quarries near Carrera in Italy? As I have argued elsewhere (Humans as Super Agents) humans have and are shifting enormous masses of earth and rock. Somewhere, if McGuire is correct about the sensitivity of the Earth’s crust, this activity should be recognisable seismically.
As with many other apocalyptic warnings about climate change, there are grains of scientific truth that should be acknowledged and respected. However, there is nothing in these particular truths that suggest that the human race is at any greater serious risk, and certainly nothing that helps to justify the mad scramble for Net Zero. I may be shaken but I am certainly not stirred.
Climate Scepticism 
Alan,
In 1668 the Spanish playwright, Ross Waldo, wrote:
“A hurricane is an earthquake in the air, and an earthquake is a hurricane beneath the ground’.
The other week, Ed Hawkins wrote:
“That side of science has moved on a lot”.
Well, yes and no.
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Relative to Glacier Bay, Alaska, glaciers advance and retreat quickly. According to the National Park Service brochure:
“Glacier Bay today is the product of the Little Ice Age, a geologically recent glacial advance in northern regions. This Little Ice Age reached its maximum extent about 1750.”
The brochure shows four historical maps of the region. In 1680 “there was no Glacier Bay then, only a broad valley with a glacier moving down it”. In 1750, the Little Ice Age came and the glaciers advanced quickly. “By 1750 the glacier reached its maximum, jutting into the Icy Strait”. But when Captain George Vancouver sailed here 45 years later, the glacier had melted back five miles into Glacier Bay – which it had gouged out. “When conservationist John Muir traveled here in 1879 the glacier had retreated 40 more miles up the bay since Vancouver’s visit”. “Today you must travel 65 miles up the bay to view tidewater glaciers.”
So glaciers advance and retreat on a time frame faster than normal geologic time but I agree that how much that affects the seismicity of that area is at best debatable.
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John, Ross Waldo, an oddly named Spaniard, possibly anticipated hurricane induced micro-quakes otherwise known stormquakes.
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Alan,
Mea culpa. The reference I had relied upon forgot to include the comma. His name is actually ‘Ross, Waldo’, author of the well-known play, ‘Nuestro Imaginario Cultural’:
https://www.abebooks.co.uk/9788476583227/Nuestro-imaginario-cultural-Simb%C3%B3lica-literaria-8476583222/plp
You just can’t get the staff nowadays.
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Alan
This is possibly an unfair question, given that you acknowledge that this excellent article is in respect of a topic which is not part of your core expertise. With regard to the claims of increased seismicity allegedly due to melting ice, in locations such as Alaska and Greenland, are you aware of any studies (other than by Bill McGuire) expressly dealing with this issue? I’m curious to know if a real observable increase is detectable, at all (having noted your reservations). Such an observable increase is obviously only a first step to making a link to melting ice, but does the process fall at the first hurdle?
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Mark, I put into Google the search words “Alaska”, “glaciers” and “earthquakes” and got dozens of hits, many from the USGS and commonly covering the same ground and using the same illustrations. As I reported, I failed to find any statistical proof that any increase in earthquake frequency/intensity could definitively attributed to loss of overlying glacial ice. All however make this link. It makes sense, but I would argue there is no proof
Since writing my article I have consulted a map of earthquakes in the British Isles. I would have predicted that most foci would have been in the East next to the North Sea. Firstly because the North Sea is prone to significant earthquakes, and secondly because areas close to the North Sea are flexing downwards into the North Sea Basin or upwards because of isostatic rebound due to melting of the combined Scottish-Scandinavian ice sheet. But no, eastern Scotland is earthquake free, and there are more earthquakes in western U.K. than in the East. Yet Ireland is virtually earthquake free. Nothing seems to make sense.
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Induced seismicity from climate change is just catastrophist’s fantasy. The latest attribution study desperate to get headlines. I work on a geothermal field where we had 25 bar drawdown from exploitation. As part of the operating consent, we had to put in an extensive microseismic network. If anything shook we had to know about it. At the end of 5 years, we had hundreds of small earthquakes at less than 10km depth. Trouble was most were outside the resistivity boundary where there had been no drawdown. We also did high pressure reinjection that other than one test into a tight formation didn’t increase seismicity.
Click to access Sherburn.pdf
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Chris Morris, many thanks for your post. It is always pleasant, when you go out on a limb, to receive confirmation of one’s prejudices from people who have experience and know their stuff.
Perhaps you might comment upon the suggestion that melting glaciers should increase the possibility of earthquakes. I’m thinking specifically of the retreat of the Fox and Franz Josef glaciers (an area I visited long ago in the 1970s and which I found truly awe inspiring) and movement along the Alpine Fault which I understand is now overdue for a potential 8 magnitude earthquake. Has there been any discussion in New Zealand of a possible link? I think I might be worried.
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Hi Alan – any thoughts on Fracking in the UK ?
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As I’m sure you are aware DFH there is a moratorium in the U.K. on stimulating the production of hydrocarbons by injecting high pressure water (plus sand and small amounts of chemicals) otherwise known as fracking. This was initiated after fracking attempts in Lancashire, near Blackpool, were quickly (days) followed by low magnitude earth tremors, the last one reaching 2,9 on the Richter Scale. It is believed that the exercise was successful in producing new and extensive fractures in the organic rich Bowland Shale but some intersected with existing faults lubricating them and allowing them to slip. The largest, a magnitude 2.9 tremor would only have been barely perceptible to a few people and it would have caused no structural damage. You need a magnitude 4 tremor before most people notice and at least a 5 before there is damage. Since the scale is logarithmic, that means the tremors produced by Lancashire would need to be ten times more energetic before they were noticeable to the population at large, and one hundred times more intense before weak buildings would be damaged. But frac-stimulated tremors were becoming larger and the fear was that more harmful earthquakes might be stimulated in the future. This ostensibly was the reason for the moratorium, but there were many other reasons, not least to the efforts of two groupings of campaigners. One, those opposed to fracking per se, the other (which we know so well) opposed to all things fossil fuel. I have some sympathy for some in the first group. The areas selected for testing only have narrow lanes, totally unsuitable for bringing in drilling rigs, and up to a dozen or more large lorries bringing the water to be injected, not to mention all the many high pressure pumps and other equipment. Damage to the road architecture must have occurred as well as weeks of interruptions of local transit. But those opposed to fracking brought concerns over from the USA where, out of hundreds of fracked wells there were a few problems – including contamination of drinking water supplies by the chemicals, some toxic or carcinogenic. Interestingly Pennsylvania, where much of the fracking occurred did not have an stimulated earthquake problem, a point ignored by those raising the other potential reasons to stop U.K. fracking. Furthermore licences to frac elsewhere in the U.K. were mainly in Southern England (Hampshire, Surrey and Sussex) where geological conditions would have been different from those in Lancashire. The ban, on geological grounds, does not make sense.
But let’s be realistic, there’s absolutely not a chance of any fracking exercises in the near future. The Government is committed to a climate change free future. We are all to move to a state of dodging rotating vanes of massed ranks of wind turbines or tripping over pipe work from innumerable ground heat exchangers converting our precious land to permafrost. No politician worth their seat would combine with evil frackers. It is a non starter. Only if the U.K. economy crashes and we can no longer finance oil and gas supplies will we even contemplate seeking to augment our own supply by fracking, but then it might be the Chinese that do it!
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There are persistent rumours that the anti-fracking campaign was bankrolled by Gasprom. I don’t know how true this was, but if fracking was shown to be viable in Europe, Russia would have lost a lot of valuable income.
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Gosh! Gasprom and the Russians protecting the back lanes of deepest, brightest Lancashire by crossing the palms of the green unwashed to prevent seismic catastrophe. Perhaps the next plot line after Line of Duty and Virgil. The BBC would buy it, it would meet so many of its goals.
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Thanks for your comment on Fracking Alan, sums up the situation nicely (unfortunately).
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Alan
The terminal faces of the West coast glaciers are very close to the Alpine Fault.. This one makes the San Andreas look like a laggard. Seismic activity in NZ is common that it would be very hard to separate anything out. However, the fault in the region from Milford to Hamner (about 300km for those who don’t know NZ – see map in this article https://www.orc.govt.nz/managing-our-environment/natural-hazards/earthquakes/alpine-fault ) is locked up and building up in tension. It is overdue to move That is earth’s crustal movement which is tracked by GPS No-one that I know of has been stupid enough to link it to climate change. .
If you look at the map in the attached news article (note it is just for one year!) you can see the issue. Most earthquakes happen in land that is not high elevation. A trivial fact is NZ averages 57 quakes a day. However, there is an obvious gap in the Fox/ Franz area.
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/close-faults-dunedin-quake-threat
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Alan
It’s only the wrong type of fracking that the greens dislike, and which finds itself subject to rigorous monitoring in the UK:
https://www.edenproject.com/mission/our-projects/eden-geothermal-energy-project
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Unfortunately I can’t find it online, and even if I did, it would almost certainly be behind a paywall. Instead, I spotted it on the BBC website’s newspaper round-up this morning. On the front of the FT today there is a story headlined:
“On thin ice
Big melt raises tsunami risk”
So far as I can see, it’s all about your friend Bill McGuire and his prognostications. The full “story” is on page 8, so far as I can see. Does anyone here take the FT? Can anyone tell us more?
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Mark, I don’t think you need to pursue this. It’s relatively easy to suss out Bill McGuire’s message. I would wager it’s yet another bit of article recycling with nothing really new. McGuire has been doing this for quite a few years.
My reasoning: 1, tsunamis are caused by two other phenomena – large earthquakes or submarine rock falls (possibly caused by earthquakes), (I suppose some tsunamis could result from monster volcanic eruptions on islands but although McGuire thinks these might be made more frequent by climate change, I don’t think so), 2. Submarine earthquakes and rockfalls are most unlikely to be directly induced by temperature increases of only a few degrees, therefore the only possible link to climate change could be the result of crustal flexure produced by melting of tidewater glaciers (lessening of load) or by sea level rise (increasing the load). Effects of large tsunamis can spread far beyond original cause, causing devastation over entire ocean basins.
Same old reasoning; can be found within other newspaper articles by the same author; yawn! Source of steady income by rewriting same old tat. Willing to eat humble pie if proven wrong, but I don’t think it likely.
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Heard the earthquake bard pontificate on the BBC News last night. As suspected McGuire predicts tsunamis to increase as a result of crustal unloading as Greenland loses ice. Makes reference to the Storegga rockfall (offshore Norway) which caused a tsunami around 10,000 years ago.
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I haven’t yet found anyone blaming the volcanic eruption on Las Palma on climate change, but I have found this:
“La Palma eruption: Are volcanoes good or bad for climate change?”
https://www.euronews.com/green/2021/09/20/la-palma-eruption-are-volcanoes-good-or-bad-for-climate-change
“A recent study by scientists at the UK’s University of Southampton discovered that in the past, chains of volcanoes may have also acted as a “safety valve” for the Earth’s climate.
“It is a balancing act,” says Professor Martin Palmer, co-author of the study.
“On one hand, these volcanoes pumped out large amounts of CO2 that increased atmospheric CO2. On the other hand, these same volcanoes helped remove that carbon via rapid weathering reactions.”
These ‘weathering reactions’ are when rocks at the Earth’s surface naturally break down and dissolve. The elements that are produced, such as calcium and magnesium, then make their way to the ocean via rivers. It is here that they form the minerals which help lock up CO2.
Dr Tom Gernon, another of the study’s authors warns that while this is a good thing, it does not mean nature can save us from climate change.”
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Guess what Mark, a warmer climate promotes faster and more intense weathering of surface exposed rocks, especially of young volcanics. Nevertheless it takes decades, often centuries, for fresh lavas to weather into deep soils. So don’t hold your breath that the new La Palma eruption will save us from climate Armageddon.
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Bill McGuire’s Gestetner must be running hot as I’m sure he will be churning out yet another linkage between earthquakes and climate change. And yesterday’s earthquake, recently downgraded from magnitude 6 to 5.9, couldn’t have happened to a more deserving crowd – those coal exporting, climate destroying Aussies. Odd that the epicentre is nowhere near a melting glacier or a rebounding coastline, but then, you can’t have everything.
But perhaps McGuire is focussed on the volcanism devastating the home of all those little yellow singing birds.
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OK, it’s eruptions, not earthquakes, but I think I might as well post this here as anywhere else:
“Terrawatch: how climate change alters impact of volcanic eruptions
Cooling impact of very explosive eruptions could be amplified while moderate eruptions have less effect”
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/oct/06/terrawatch-how-climate-change-alters-impact-of-volcanic-eruptions
“It’s well known that volcanic eruptions alter the climate but can human-made climate change alter volcanic eruptions? Curiously, the answer appears to be yes.
When the Philippine volcano Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991, the resulting sulphuric acid haze suppressed global temperatures by 0.5C for more than a year. Very explosive eruptions like this are rare – they occur once or twice a century on average – but their cooling impact could be amplified by as much as 15% as the world becomes warmer.
That’s because the stratosphere (the second layer of the Earth’s atmosphere) will be warmer and less stratified which, according to research published in Nature Communications, will result in sulphate aerosols spreading further and faster around the world, blocking more solar radiation.
Meanwhile, moderately explosive eruptions – such as that of the Taal volcano in the Philippines in 2020 – which tend to occur once a year may have their cooling impact diminished by as much as 75% in a warmer world.
That’s because the height of the tropopause (the boundary between the first and second layers of the atmosphere) is predicted to increase, making it less likely that small and medium volcanic plumes will reach the stratosphere, and more likely that aerosols will be quickly washed out of the lower atmosphere by rain and snow.”
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