1,2,1,4,5,2,6,7,4,8,9,12,12,13,9,11,14,1- 1BOKU University, Institute of Meteorology and Climatology, Department of Ecosystem Management, Climate and Biodiversity, Wien, Austria (katharina.perny@boku.ac.at)
- 2Physikalisch-Meteorologisches Observatorium Davos und World Radiation Center (PMOD/WRC), Davos, Switzerland
- 3Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz, Germany
- 4School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
- 5National Centre for Earth Observation, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
- 6nstitute for Particle Physics and Astrophysics, ETH Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland
- 7Finnish Meteorological Institute, Atmospheric Research Centre of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland
- 8National Centre for Atmospheric Science, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
- 9Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany
- 10Department of Physical and Chemical Sciences, Università dell’Aquila, L’Aquila, Italy
- 11Atmospheric Chemistry, Observations, and Modeling Laboratory, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, USA
- 12Japan Agency for Marine–Earth Science and Technology, Yokohama, Japan
- 13Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan
- 14Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
Some major volcanic eruptions, such as the one of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991, can inject large amounts of sulfur dioxide (SO2) into the stratosphere, leading to the formation of a volcanic aerosol cloud. This dense aerosol cloud induces radiative heating of the stratosphere, causing ozone and water vapour changes, thereby altering middle atmospheric dynamics and chemistry. The scale of these impacts on stratospheric temperature anomalies is still highly uncertain.
In this study we analyse data from the Historical Eruptions SO2 Emission Assessment Protocol (HErSEA) under the Interactive Stratospheric Aerosol Model Intercomparison Project (ISA-MIP). The results from eight global interactive-aerosol models confirm our general understanding of the stratospheric aerosol forcing due to SO2 injection following a volcanic eruption. As direct observations are sparse we compare models to three widely used reanalyses (ERA5, MERRA2, and JRA55). This analysis shows that while the multi-model mean temperature anomalies agree well with reanalyses, differences among individual models can be large. Our study shows that agreement in the median occurs through error compensation when averaging across models. The analysis and the sensitivity tests for model selection presented here highlight that by far the most important factor driving both magnitude and spread of the multi-model distribution in temperature response to volcanic aerosol forcing is model choice. Differences in transport, radiative transfer, and microphysics as well as the characterization of aerosol size distributions play a crucial role for the simulated spread in the temperature response.
Another candidate to explain the spread in the ISA-MIP models, is the use of interactive aerosol schemes. To test this hypothesis, we compared the ISA-MIP multi-model distribution with those obtained from CCMI-2022 and CMIP6-AMIP model intercomparisons, which use prescribed SADs. If indeed interactive aerosol treatment would be a key contributor, one would expect smaller multi-model temperature anomaly distributions from CCMI-2022 and CMIP6-AMIP. Interestingly, this hypothesis has to be rejected, as no reduction in the multi-model spread is found. Hence, we argue for caution in attribution studies and the interpretation of stratospheric aerosol injection experiments relying on individual or few models.
How to cite: Perny, K., Sukhodolov, T., Kuchar, A., Arsenovic, P., Rosati, B., Brühl, C., Dhomse, S. S., Jörimann, A., Laakso, A., Mann, G., Niemeier, U., Pitari, G., Quaglia, I., Sekiya, T., Sudo, K., Timmreck, C., Tilmes, S., Visioni, D., and Rieder, H. E.: An assessment of the stratospheric temperature response to volcanic sulfate injections from recent Model Intercomparison Projects, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-17112, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-17112, 2026.
