Impact of Tropical Volcanic Eruptions Possibly Greater than Previously Thought

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The authors of PNAS paper, Global hydroclimatic response to tropical volcanic eruptions over the last millennium, believe they may have identified significant and extended effects of tropical eruptions that go beyond those predicted by current climate models. From the paper:

Significance: Future large tropical volcanic eruptions will induce global hydroclimatic changes, superimposed on anthropogenic climate change. Understanding how volcanic eruptions affect global hydroclimate is therefore critically important. Tejedor et al. use a new paleoclimatic product, which combines information from high-resolution proxies and climate models, to estimate volcanic impacts on hydroclimate over the last millennium. They find that past eruptions caused severe drying in tropical Africa and across Central Asia and the Middle East and significantly wetter conditions over Oceania and the South American monsoon region, some of which persisted for a decade or longer. These proxy-based findings suggest that, relative to estimates from a state-of-the-art climate model, much larger and persistent hydroclimatic changes are possible across regions of important socioeconomic activity.

Given our present inability to accurately predict the timing, magnitude and (to some extent) the type of eruption, these provisional findings add yet another variable to an already complex picture. Meanwhile (if I may briefly stand on a soap-box and sing to the choir) religious fundamentalists, certain business interests and elements of the criminally insane, deny climate change is real, or that if it is, it is no problem.