Text/Yangcheng Evening News all-media reporter Chen Liang
On January 15, a volcano erupted violently near the South Pacific island nation of Tonga, triggering a severe transoceanic tsunami that attracted widespread global attention. The data shows that the eruption was the strongest since the 1991 eruption of Pinatubo in the Philippines, and its eruption level has reached level 5.
According to the projections, the current eruption activity may last for weeks or months, what are the potential dangers and impacts on the Earth's climate environment? In this regard, the Yangcheng Evening News all-media reporter interviewed Liu Fei, a professor at the School of Atmospheric Sciences of Sun Yat-sen University.
Volcanic tsunamis or climatic disasters such as rising sea levels
Yangcheng Evening News: How does volcanic eruption affect the climate and affect human life?
Liu Fei: Since the records of human history, volcanoes have been changing our lives by influencing the climate. For example, the 13th-century Samalas Indonesian volcano may have been the most important reason for the formation of the Xiaoice cold period over the past thousand years.
Why do large volcanoes affect the climate? The most important thing is to inject a large amount of sulfur dioxide gas into the atmospheric stratosphere through violent eruptions, and sulfur dioxide produces sulfate aerosols through chemical processes, which can stay in the dry stratosphere for about 2-3 years. These aerosols are like an umbrella for the earth, reflecting and scattering sunlight, reducing the sunlight reaching the ground and achieving the effect of cooling.
Large volcanoes will directly reflect sunlight to keep the earth cooling for 2-3 years, and will also form a longer cooling through the action of oceans and sea ice, and their effects can be up to decades or even hundreds of years.
Yangcheng Evening News: How will the volcanic eruption in Tonga affect the climate?
Liu Fei: The eruption of the Toga volcano mainly caused geological disasters, and short-term shock waves and gravitational waves in the atmosphere and huge tsunamis in the oceans all had an important impact on the Pacific Rim countries. In terms of climate, its impact is multi-layered and uncertain.
The main way to determine whether a large volcano can cause climatic effects is to assess how much sulfur dioxide it erupts. This time the eruption of The Tonga volcano is relatively special, although the intensity is large, but based on international satellite monitoring estimates, its total sulfur dioxide eruption is only 0.4 million tons, less than one-fiftieth of the 1991 Pinatubo eruption, which means that the effect of the subsequent climate through parasol cooling will be very weak.
But we still need to monitor it and the Pacific Rim region, which causes tsunamis that impact Antarctic icebergs that are already vulnerable, and climate disasters such as sea-level rise caused by potential iceberg ruptures are severe.
The conjecture of using a nuclear bomb shockwave to wipe out a typhoon was overturned
Yangcheng Evening News: What other phenomena and impacts have been caused by the volcanic eruption in Tonga?
Liu Fei: In the past three major volcanic eruptions in 1963, 1982 and 1991, there was a significant decrease in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. A large number of volcanic minerals fall into the South Pacific, and how their fertilization effect on the creatures of the South Pacific affects the climate is a matter of great concern to us.
In addition, the Internet hotly discussed "Tonga volcanic eruption will make the southern hemisphere sunset more beautiful" is because the aerosol formed by the tonga volcanic eruption of sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere will scatter sunlight and appear reddish from the ground.
There was also a weather phenomenon in this eruption. In 1991, the Pinatubo volcano "killed" typhoon Yunya over it, and this time there was a weak cyclone on the southwest side of the tonga volcano, but it was not affected, indicating that the international hypothesis of eliminating the typhoon with a nuclear bomb shock wave was not valid, and it was more feasible to change the typhoon by changing the thermal and cloud physical structure of the typhoon, as in 1991.
Yangcheng Evening News: What other thinking has the Tonga volcanic eruption caused in the atmospheric science community?
Liu Fei: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its sixth climate assessment in 2021, which pointed out that the most important problem facing our community of shared future for mankind is the climate disaster caused by global warming caused by human activities.
The extreme rainstorms, floods, droughts, heat waves, and ecological degradation brought about by climate warming have all brought great pressure on the safety of human life and production, and the prosperity of culture, science and art. In order to cope with global warming, governments around the world are also actively facing it from the perspective of a community with a shared future for mankind. The Chinese government has also pledged to reach the ambitious "double carbon" targets of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality by 2030 and 2060, respectively.
The cooling effect of volcanic eruptions is "replicated" to drive global cooling
Yangcheng Evening News: What are the impacts of climate change and human culture and art on each other?
Liu Fei: In the special stage of civilization entering the "Anthropocene", the scientific community is actively responding to the huge pressure brought about by global changes, and the future earth plan came into being, organizing and launching various scientific plans. Dong Wenjie, Director of the Future Earth Global Secretary Center (China), recently organized a symposium on climate, environment and culture and art at Sun Yat-sen University to discuss the impact of climate change on human culture and art and how culture and art can change our climate decisions.
The famous British painter Joseph Marrod William Turner presented the scarlet sky after the eruption in his painting "Slave Ship", and his painting style in his period was reddish, mainly influenced by the great eruption of Tambora in 1815.
Paintings like this give contemporary scientists unlimited inspiration, can we also hold up an umbrella for the earth to delay global warming? A series of earth system engineering programs that artificially affect the climate have been carried out internationally, the most famous of which is the artificial harmless aerosol injection in the stratosphere, which will simulate the cooling effect of volcanic eruptions, reduce global temperatures, and win valuable time for our emission reductions.
Although the Toga Volcano cannot bring a hint of coolness to our hot earth for the time being, its shocking eruption has aroused painful memories and forward thinking of the community of human destiny.
【Expert Profile】
Liu Fei
Professor of School of Atmospheric Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, doctoral supervisor, Distinguished Professor of Jiangsu Province. Member of the Power Committee of the Chinese Meteorological Society, participating author of the Sixth IPCC Report. He has been engaged in tropical dynamics research for a long time, mainly studying the mechanism of oscillation formation and development in tropical seasons and the sensitivity of the climate system to different external forcings.
Edit: Mu Qing
Source: Golden Sheep Network