Abstract

Explosive volcanic eruptions have critical impacts on our environment and societies including local-regional scale devastation from pyroclastic flows and tephra fallout, regional-continental scale air pollution and airspace shutdown, and global-scale cooling of Earth’s surface. I will give an overview of my group research and how it contributes to understanding and managing these impacts. First, I will discuss how volcanic plume modelling, informed by laboratory experiments and observational databases, helps us understand the relationship between eruption intensity, atmospheric conditions and the height of injection of volcanic ash and gas into the atmosphere. Second, I will discuss how numerical models ranging from reduced-complexity models to full-blown Earth System Models with interactive stratospheric aerosols can help us constrain the radiative forcing and climatic impacts of volcanic eruptions. Using ice-core, geological and satellite records, I will apply these models to discuss volcanic impacts on climate from 8,000 BC to 2100. Last, I will bring together volcanic plume, aerosol and climate modelling to interrogate how ongoing climate change driven by anthropogenic activities will affect the life cycle of volcanic stratospheric aerosols, and whether we should expect more or less volcanic cooling as Earth warms.