Space based observations of volcanism for reduced uncertainties in climate models

Explosive volcanic eruptions can inject SO2 into the stratosphere where the gas forms submicron aerosol particles.

Large such eruptions can have a strong climatic impact and have the potential to lower global mean temperatures substantially.

Depending on location of the eruption and the height of the injected SO2 these particles can cool the climate for a few months or up to several years.

In particular, the vertical location of the SO2 injections is crucial in order to estimate how the aerosol will be transported and how long the particles can remain in the atmosphere and thereby cool the climate.

In order to understand the human influence on climate we need to have a good understanding of these natural climate drivers.This project will utilize satellite data of SO2 created within a current ongoing project within our research group. This dataset provides a high resolution vertical representation of the SO2 injected into the stratosphere.

The improved SO2emission profiles will be put into a climate model to simulate the aerosol formation, transport and climate forcing.

The model results will be evaluated using another high resolutions satellite dataset developed at Lund University on the aerosol load in the stratosphere.

Thus, this project combines 2 new satellite datasets that will be further developed and used to improve model representation of stratospheric aerosol to gain a better estimate of volcanic impact on climate.