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Impacts of major volcanic eruptions over the past two millennia on both global and Chinese climates: A review

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Abstract

Major volcanic eruptions (MVEs) have attracted increasing attention from the scientific community. Previous studies have explored the climatic impact of MVEs over the past two millennia. However, proxy-based reconstructions and climate model simulations indicate divergent responses of global and China’s regional climates to MVEs. Here, we used multiple data from observations, reconstructions, simulations, and assimilations to summarize the historical facts of MVEs, the characteristics and mechanisms of their climatic impact, and directions for future research. We reviewed volcanic datasets and determined intensive MVE periods; these periods corresponded to the years 530–700, 1200–1460, and 1600–1840 CE. After tropical MVEs, a substantial cooling effect is observed throughout the globe and China on the interannual-interdecadal time scales but an inconsistent cooling magnitude is detected between reconstructions and simulations. In the first summer after tropical MVEs, a decrease in global and monsoonal precipitation is observed. In reconstructions and simulations, an increased precipitation is seen for the Yangtze River Basin, while large uncertainties in precipitation changes are present for other regions of China. Decadal drought can be induced by frequent eruptions and volcanism superimposed on low solar irradiation and internal variability. MVEs affect climate directly through the radiative effect and indirectly by modulating internal variability, such as the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). However, changes in the phase, amplitude, and periodicity of ENSO and AMO after MVEs and the associated mechanisms remain controversial, which could account for model-reconstruction disagreements. Moreover, other internal variability, uncertainties in reconstruction methods and aerosol-climate models, and climate background may also induce model-reconstruction disagreements. Knowledge gaps and directions for future research are also discussed.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the GPCP, PMIP, CESM-LME, PHYDA, and LMR for providing the observation, simulation, and assimilation data and thank the researchers who provided the reconstructions. We thank anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 42130604, 42105044, 41971108, 42111530182 & 41971021), the Consultation and Review Project of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. 2022-ZW04-A-010), the Swedish STINT (Grant No. CH2019-8377), the Future Earth Global Secretariat Hub China, the International Research Center of Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals (Grant No. CBAS2022GSP08), and the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (Grant No. 164320H116).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory for Virtual Geographic Environment, Ministry of Education; State Key Laboratory Cultivation Base of Geographical Environment Evolution of Jiangsu Province; Jiangsu Center for Collaborative Innovation in Geographical Information Resource Development and Application; School of Geography Science, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, 210023, China

    Weiyi Sun, Guonian Lü, Liang Ning & Jian Liu

  2. Regional Climate Group, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, 40530, Sweden

    Deliang Chen

  3. College of Environmental and Resource Science, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058, China

    Chaochao Gao

  4. Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences & Institute of Atmospheric Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200437, China

    Renhe Zhang

  5. Department of Atmospheric Sciences and Atmosphere-Ocean Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, 96825, USA

    Bin Wang

  6. Jiangsu Provincial Key Laboratory for Numerical Simulation of Large Scale Complex Systems, School of Mathematical Science, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, 210023, China

    Jian Liu

  7. Open Studio for the Simulation of Ocean-Climate-Isotope, Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology, Qingdao, 266237, China

    Jian Liu

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  1. Weiyi Sun
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Sun, W., Chen, D., Lü, G. et al. Impacts of major volcanic eruptions over the past two millennia on both global and Chinese climates: A review. Sci. China Earth Sci. 67, 61–78 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-022-1218-0

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