The impact of the 1783–1784 AD Laki eruption on global aerosol formation processes and cloud condensation nuclei

Schmidt, Anja; Carslaw, K. S.; Mann, G. W.; Wilson, Marjorie; Breider, T. J.; Pickering, Steven; Thordarson, T.

doi:10.5194/acp-10-6025-2010

Cited by 66 publications

(76 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…The nucleation events detected in the volcanic plume are characterized by J 2 that are four times higher (J 2 ¼ 4.76 AE 2.63 s −1 ) than the average values computed from long-term measurements (2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011) at the station (J 2 ¼ 1.32 AE 0.9 s −1 on 34 comparable events) and 10% higher than the J 2 99th-percentile value (3.66 s −1 calculated on 34 comparable events). After the observations of the presence of H 2 SO 4 and water in volcanic particles during the Pinatubo eruption by Deshler et al (9), the majority of studies used the H 2 SO 4 − H 2 O binary homogeneous nucleation (BHN) theory (6,7,12,19) to estimate the particle formation rates. In the same manner, we can calculate from our data the H 2 SO 4 − H 2 O binary homogeneous nucleation rate J 2;BHN using Yu's procedure (20), which is the closest to the BHN theory (21).…”

Section: New Particle Formation Eventsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Observations of nucleation of new particles in a volcanic plume

Boulon

Sellegri

Hervo

et al. 2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Volcanic eruptions caused major weather and climatic changes on timescales ranging from hours to centuries in the past. Volcanic particles are injected in the atmosphere both as primary particles rapidly deposited due to their large sizes on time scales of minutes to a few weeks in the troposphere, and secondary particles mainly derived from the oxidation of sulfur dioxide. These particles are responsible for the atmospheric cooling observed at both regional and global scales following large volcanic eruptions. However, large condensational sinks due to preexisting particles within the plume, and unknown nucleation mechanisms under these circumstances make the assumption of new secondary particle formation still uncertain because the phenomenon has never been observed in a volcanic plume. In this work, we report the first observation of nucleation and new secondary particle formation events in a volcanic plume. These measurements were performed at the puy de Dôme atmospheric research station in central France during the Eyjafjallajokull volcano eruption in Spring 2010. We show that the nucleation is indeed linked to exceptionally high concentrations of sulfuric acid and present an unusual high particle formation rate. In addition we demonstrate that the binary H 2 SO 4 − H 2 O nucleation scheme, as it is usually considered in modeling studies, underestimates by 7 to 8 orders of magnitude the observed particle formation rate and, therefore, should not be applied in tropospheric conditions. These results may help to revisit all past simulations of the impact of volcanic eruptions on climate.secondary aerosols | volcanic sulfur | nanoparticles V olcanic eruptions and their impact on climate have been extensively investigated in geological archives such as sediments (1), ice cores (2-5), and through modeling studies (6, 7) but processes taking place in the volcanic plume have rarely been directly observed. The sulfur dioxide emitted in large amounts during explosive volcanic eruptions (8) can be oxidized to sulfuric acid, thus many authors suspect that the formed sulfuric acid gives rise to the formation of new secondary particle from binary homogeneous nucleation mechanism (1, 9-12). Those new particles can then affect the atmospheric radiative balance both directly and indirectly because they can act as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) (13). This leads to a cooling effect, which is on a time scale from months to years, depending on the location of the eruption and the height at which volcanic gases were emitted.The Eyjafjallajokull volcano located in the south of Iceland [63°38′ N, 19°36′ W, summit 1,660 m above sea level (asl)] erupted on March 20, 2010. A major outbreak of the central crater under the covering ice cap followed on April 14, 2010 (Institute of Earth Sciences, 2010). A large volcanic plume composed of ashes and gases rose up to the tropopause level (approximately 10 km) for days and were observed by satellite and ground-based remote sensing instruments. The volcanic plume reached European altitude s...

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Section: New Particle Formation Eventsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Observations of nucleation of new particles in a volcanic plume

Boulon

Sellegri

Hervo

et al. 2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…The model has been used in several studies of global aerosol (Schmidt et al, 2010Woodhouse et al, 2010Woodhouse et al, , 2012Spracklen et al, 2011b;Lee et al, 2012;Mann et al, 2012) and is a faster version of the GLOMAP-bin module that has been very widely used (e.g. Spracklen et al, 2005aSpracklen et al, ,b, 2010Spracklen et al, , 2011aKorhonen et al, 2008;Reddington et al, 2011).…”

Section: Model Description and Set-upmentioning

confidence: 99%

The magnitude and causes of uncertainty in global model simulations of cloud condensation nuclei

et al. 2013

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Aerosol–cloud interaction effects are a major source of uncertainty in climate models so it is important to quantify the sources of uncertainty and thereby direct research efforts. However, the computational expense of global aerosol models has prevented a full statistical analysis of their outputs. Here we perform a variance-based analysis of a global 3-D aerosol microphysics model to quantify the magnitude and leading causes of parametric uncertainty in model-estimated present-day concentrations of cloud condensation nuclei (CCN). Twenty-eight model parameters covering essentially all important aerosol processes, emissions and representation of aerosol size distributions were defined based on expert elicitation. An uncertainty analysis was then performed based on a Monte Carlo-type sampling of an emulator built for each model grid cell. The standard deviation around the mean CCN varies globally between about ±30% over some marine regions to ±40–100% over most land areas and high latitudes, implying that aerosol processes and emissions are likely to be a significant source of uncertainty in model simulations of aerosol–cloud effects on climate. Among the most important contributors to CCN uncertainty are the sizes of emitted primary particles, including carbonaceous combustion particles from wildfires, biomass burning and fossil fuel use, as well as sulfate particles formed on sub-grid scales. Emissions of carbonaceous combustion particles affect CCN uncertainty more than sulfur emissions. Aerosol emission-related parameters dominate the uncertainty close to sources, while uncertainty in aerosol microphysical processes becomes increasingly important in remote regions, being dominated by deposition and aerosol sulfate formation during cloud-processing. The results lead to several recommendations for research that would result in improved modelling of cloud–active aerosol on a global scale

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“…GLOMAP-mode has been used in several recent studies (Manktelow et al, 2007;Woodhouse et al, 2008Woodhouse et al, , 2010Schmidt et al, 2010), but the model description in these papers was necessarily brief. Here, GLOMAP-mode is described in detail, and evaluated against a series of observational datasets from the literature.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Description and evaluation of GLOMAP-mode: a modal global aerosol microphysics model for the UKCA composition-climate model

et al. 2010

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Abstract. A new version of the Global Model of AerosolProcesses (GLOMAP) is described, which uses a twomoment pseudo-modal aerosol dynamics approach rather than the original two-moment bin scheme. GLOMAP-mode simulates the multi-component global aerosol, resolving sulfate, sea-salt, dust, black carbon (BC) and particulate organic matter (POM), the latter including primary and biogenic secondary POM. Aerosol processes are simulated in a size-resolved manner including primary emissions, secondary particle formation by binary homogeneous nucleation of sulfuric acid and water, particle growth by coagulation, condensation and cloud-processing and removal by dry deposition, in-cloud and below-cloud scavenging. A series of benchmark observational datasets are assembled against which the skill of the model is assessed in terms of normalised mean bias (b) and correlation coefficient (R). Overall, the model performs well against the datasets in simulating concentrations of aerosol precursor gases, chemically speciated particle mass, condensation nuclei (CN) and cloud condensation nuclei (CCN). Surface sulfate, sea-salt and dust mass concentrations are all captured well, while BC and POM are biased low (but correlate well). Surface CN concentrations compare reasonably well in free troposphere and marine sites, but are underestimated at continental and coastal sites related to underestimation of either primary particle emissions or new particle formation. The model compares well against a compilation of CCN observations coverCorrespondence to: G. W. Mann (gmann@env.leeds.ac.uk) ing a range of environments and against vertical profiles of size-resolved particle concentrations over Europe. The simulated global burden, lifetime and wet removal of each of the simulated aerosol components is also examined and each lies close to multi-model medians from the AEROCOM model intercomparison exercise.

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The impact of the 1783–1784 AD Laki eruption on global aerosol formation processes and cloud condensation nuclei

Cited by 66 publications

References 48 publications

Observations of nucleation of new particles in a volcanic plume

Observations of nucleation of new particles in a volcanic plume

The magnitude and causes of uncertainty in global model simulations of cloud condensation nuclei

Description and evaluation of GLOMAP-mode: a modal global aerosol microphysics model for the UKCA composition-climate model

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