Study Links Rapid Ice Sheet Melting With Distant Volcanic Eruptions (upi.com)

schwit1 quotes UPI: New research suggests volcanic eruptions can trigger periods of rapid ice sheet melting... "Over a time span of 1,000 years, we found that volcanic eruptions generally correspond with enhanced ice sheet melting within a year or so," Francesco Muschitiello, a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said in a news release. The volcanoes of note weren't situated next-door, but thousands of miles from the ice sheet, a reminder of the unexpected global impacts of volcanic activity.

The new research -- detailed this week in the journal Nature Communications -- suggests ash ejected into the atmosphere by erupting volcanoes can be deposited thousands of miles away. When it's deposited on ice sheets, the dark particles cause the ice to absorb more thermal energy and accelerate melting... Some scientists have even suggested melting encouraged by volcanic eruptions could trigger even more eruptions, a positive feedback loop. As glaciers and ice sheets melt, pressure is relieved from the planet's crust, allowing magma to rise to the surface.

Comments

Re:The problem with climate science

[Anne Thwacks]

The problem here is "because something is complex, we cant model it" is a new and improved kind of terminally stupid.

Rocket science is complex, but we (maybe not you) model it adequately.

Pete and Bogs* may be Bart Simpson's school mates for all I know, but it is clear as hell you do not understand the concept of science, and need to investigate that before you go on to find what science tells you.

*The stuff that forms boggy ground is called peat.

Re:Let's bury that one

[K. S. Kyosuke]

It's a different pathway, though. Extra heating of the atmosphere by increased GHG concentrations is a different way of making the ice melt faster than decreasing its albedo through fine particles, and volcanoes could be effecting both. On that note, though, I'm wondering about other aspects of human activities such as emitting coal ash. Certainly past local effects of our coal plants involved dirtying up everything around. Volcanic CO2 output is negligible compared to recent fossil CO2 release from human activity, though. Not sure about SO2 effects.

Re:The problem with climate science

[KeensMustard]

If the grid is unpredictable, then that triggers a need to invest heavily in making it predictable, since an unpredictable grid is dangerous.

The same applies to climate. If the modeling is good, then we have an accurate representation of the future direction which is between the best and worst case scenario. If the modeling can't be trusted, then the worst case scenarios become possible, which means we need to mitigate against those as well - some unpredicted secondary effect that causes runaway warming, for example. That means immediate, and drastic, and expensive, action.

If the models are bad, then this should be proven, and then we'll move on to immediately closing down all our sources of emissions.