Identification

Title

Modeling the 1783-1784 Laki eruption in Iceland: 2. Climate impacts

Abstract

The Laki eruption in Iceland, which began in June 1783, was followed by many of the typical climate responses to volcanic eruptions: suppressed precipitation and drought, crop failure, and surface cooling. In contrast to the observed cooling in 1784–1786, the summer of 1783 was anomalously warm in Western Europe, with July temperatures reaching more than 3 K above the mean. However, the winter of 1783–1784 in Europe was as cold as 3 K below the mean. While climate models generally reproduce the surface cooling and decreased rainfall associated with volcanic eruptions, model studies have failed to reproduce the extreme warming in western Europe that followed the Laki eruption. As a result of the inability to reproduce the anomalous warming, the question remains as to whether this phenomenon was a response to the eruption or merely an example of internal climate variability. Using the Community Earth System Model from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, we investigate the “Laki haze” and its effect on Northern Hemisphere climate in the 12 months following the eruption onset. We find that the warm summer of 1783 was a result of atmospheric blocking over Northern Europe, which in our model cannot be attributed to the eruption. In addition, the extremely cold winter of 1783–1784 was aided by an increased likelihood of an El Niño after the eruption. Understanding the causes of these anomalies is important not only for historical purposes but also for understanding and predicting possible climate responses to future high‐latitude volcanic eruptions.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7z89gjz

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2019-07-04T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact