Chaochao Gao

Bio: Chaochao Gao is an academic researcher from Zhejiang University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Volcano & Climate model. The author has an hindex of 13, co-authored 20 publications receiving 1233 citations. Previous affiliations of Chaochao Gao include Rutgers University.

Volcanic forcing of climate over the past 1500 years: An improved ice core-based index for climate models

Abstract: [1] Understanding natural causes of climate change is vital to evaluate the relative impacts of human pollution and land surface modification on climate. We have investigated one of the most important natural causes of climate change, volcanic eruptions, by using 54 ice core records from both the Arctic and Antarctica. Our recently collected suite of ice core data, more than double the number of cores ever used before, reduces errors inherent in reconstructions based on a single or small number of cores, which enables us to obtain much higher accuracy in both detection of events and quantification of the radiative effects. We extracted volcanic deposition signals from each ice core record by applying a high-pass loess filter to the time series and examining peaks that exceed twice the 31-year running median absolute deviation. We then studied the spatial pattern of volcanic sulfate deposition on Greenland and Antarctica and combined this knowledge with a new understanding of stratospheric transport of volcanic aerosols to produce a forcing data set as a function of month, latitude, and altitude for the past 1500 years. We estimated the uncertainties associated with the choice of volcanic signal extraction criteria, ice core sulfate deposition to stratospheric loading calibration factor, and the season for the eruptions without a recorded month. We forced an energy balance climate model with this new volcanic forcing data set, together with solar and anthropogenic forcing, to simulate the large-scale temperature response. The results agree well with instrumental observations for the past 150 years and with proxy records for the entire period. Through better characterization of the natural causes of climate change, this new data set will lead to improved prediction of anthropogenic impacts on climate. The new data set of stratospheric sulfate injections from volcanic eruptions for the past 1500 years, as a function of latitude, altitude, and month, is available for download in a format suitable for forcing general circulation models of the climate system.

Modeling the distribution of the volcanic aerosol cloud from the 1783–1784 Laki eruption

Abstract: [1] We conducted simulations of the atmospheric transformation and transport of the emissions of the 1783–1784 Laki basaltic flood lava eruption (64.10°N, 17.15°W) using the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies modelE climate model coupled to a sulfur cycle chemistry model. The model simulations successfully reproduced the aerosol clouds of the 1912 Katmai and 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruptions, giving us confidence in the Laki simulations. Simulations of the Laki eruption produce peak zonal mean sulfate (SO4) concentrations of over 70 ppbv during August and into September 1783 in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere at high latitudes. While the majority of the sulfate aerosol was removed during the fall and early winter, a significant aerosol perturbation remained into 1784. The peak SO2 gas loading was just over 37 megatons (Mt) in late June with the sulfate loading peaking in late August 1783 at 60 Mt over the average of 3 runs. This yielded a peak sulfate aerosol (75% H2SO4, 25% H2O) loading of over 80 Mt with the total aerosol produced during the entire eruption being about 165 Mt. The resulting sulfate deposition compares well with ice cores taken across Greenland. The top of atmosphere net radiative forcing peaks at −27 W/m2 over the high latitudes during late summer 1783 and produces a global mean forcing of −4 W/m2. The model results confirm that Northern Hemisphere high-latitude volcanic eruptions produce aerosols that remain mostly confined north of 30°N latitude.

Role of eruption season in reconciling model and proxy responses to tropical volcanism.

Abstract: The response of the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) to tropical volcanic eruptions has important worldwide implications, but remains poorly constrained. Paleoclimate records suggest an “El Nino-like” warming 1 year following major eruptions [Adams JB, Mann ME, Ammann CM (2003) Nature 426:274–278] and “La Nina-like” cooling within the eruption year [Li J, et al. (2013) Nat Clim Chang 3:822–826]. However, climate models currently cannot capture all these responses. Many eruption characteristics are poorly constrained, which may contribute to uncertainties in model solutions—for example, the season of eruption occurrence is often unknown and assigned arbitrarily. Here we isolate the effect of eruption season using experiments with the Community Earth System Model (CESM), varying the starting month of two large tropical eruptions. The eruption-year atmospheric circulation response is strongly seasonally dependent, with effects on European winter warming, the Intertropical Convergence Zone, and the southeast Asian monsoon. This creates substantial variations in eruption-year hydroclimate patterns, which do sometimes exhibit La Nina-like features as in the proxy record. However, eruption-year equatorial Pacific cooling is not driven by La Nina dynamics, but strictly by transient radiative cooling. In contrast, equatorial warming the following year occurs for all starting months and operates dynamically like El Nino. Proxy reconstructions confirm these results: eruption-year cooling is insignificant, whereas warming in the following year is more robust. This implies that accounting for the event season may be necessary to describe the initial response to volcanic eruptions and that climate models may be more accurately simulating volcanic influences than previously thought.

The 1452 or 1453 A.D. Kuwae eruption signal derived from multiple ice core records : Greatest volcanic sulfate event of the past 700 years

Abstract: [ 1] We combined 33 ice core records, 13 from the Northern Hemisphere and 20 from the Southern Hemisphere, to determine the timing and magnitude of the great Kuwae eruption in the mid-15th century. We extracted volcanic deposition signals by applying a high-pass loess filter to the time series and examining peaks that exceed twice the 31 year running median absolute deviation. By accounting for the dating uncertainties associated with each record, these ice core records together reveal a large volcanogenic acid deposition event during 1453 - 1457 A. D. The results suggest only one major stratospheric injection from the Kuwae eruption and confirm previous findings that the Kuwae eruption took place in late 1452 or early 1453, which may serve as a reference to evaluate and improve the dating of ice core records. The average total sulfate deposition from the Kuwae eruption was 93 kg SO4/km(2) in Antarctica and 25 kg SO4/km(2) in Greenland. The deposition in Greenland was probably underestimated since it was the average value of only two northern Greenland sites with very low accumulation rates. After taking the spatial variation into consideration, the average Kuwae deposition in Greenland was estimated to be 45 kg SO4/km(2). By applying the same technique to the other major eruptions of the past 700 years our result suggests that the Kuwae eruption was the largest stratospheric sulfate event of that period, probably surpassing the total sulfate deposition of the Tambora eruption of 1815, which produced 59 kg SO4/km(2) in Antarctica and 50 kg SO4/km(2) in Greenland.

Anthropogenic and Natural Radiative Forcing

Abstract: This chapter should be cited as: Myhre, G., D. Shindell, F.-M. Bréon, W. Collins, J. Fuglestvedt, J. Huang, D. Koch, J.-F. Lamarque, D. Lee, B. Mendoza, T. Nakajima, A. Robock, G. Stephens, T. Takemura and H. Zhang, 2013: Anthropogenic and Natural Radiative Forcing. In: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Stocker, T.F., D. Qin, G.-K. Plattner, M. Tignor, S.K. Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex and P.M. Midgley (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA. Coordinating Lead Authors: Gunnar Myhre (Norway), Drew Shindell (USA)

Continental-scale temperature variability during the past two millennia

Abstract: Past global climate changes had strong regional expression To elucidate their spatio-temporal pattern, we reconstructed past temperatures for seven continental-scale regions during the past one to two millennia The most coherent feature in nearly all of the regional temperature reconstructions is a long-term cooling trend, which ended late in the nineteenth century At multi-decadal to centennial scales, temperature variability shows distinctly different regional patterns, with more similarity within each hemisphere than between them There were no globally synchronous multi-decadal warm or cold intervals that define a worldwide Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age, but all reconstructions show generally cold conditions between ad 1580 and 1880, punctuated in some regions by warm decades during the eighteenth century The transition to these colder conditions occurred earlier in the Arctic, Europe and Asia than in North America or the Southern Hemisphere regions Recent warming reversed the long-term cooling; during the period ad 1971–2000, the area-weighted average reconstructed temperature was higher than any other time in nearly 1,400 years

Timing and climate forcing of volcanic eruptions for the past 2,500 years

Abstract: Volcanic eruptions contribute to climate variability, but quantifying these contributions has been limited by inconsistencies in the timing of atmospheric volcanic aerosol loading determined from ice cores and subsequent cooling from climate proxies such as tree rings. Here we resolve these inconsistencies and show that large eruptions in the tropics and high latitudes were primary drivers of interannual-to-decadal temperature variability in the Northern Hemisphere during the past 2,500 years. Our results are based on new records of atmospheric aerosol loading developed from high-resolution, multi-parameter measurements from an array of Greenland and Antarctic ice cores as well as distinctive age markers to constrain chronologies. Overall, cooling was proportional to the magnitude of volcanic forcing and persisted for up to ten years after some of the largest eruptive episodes. Our revised timescale more firmly implicates volcanic eruptions as catalysts in the major sixth-century pandemics, famines, and socioeconomic disruptions in Eurasia and Mesoamerica while allowing multi-millennium quantification of climate response to volcanic forcing.

Anthropogenic aerosols and the weakening of the South Asian summer monsoon

Abstract: Changes in monsoon rainfall are caused by human-produced aerosols slowing the tropical atmospheric circulation. Observations show that South Asia underwent a widespread summertime drying during the second half of the 20th century, but it is unclear whether this trend was due to natural variations or human activities. We used a series of climate model experiments to investigate the South Asian monsoon response to natural and anthropogenic forcings. We find that the observed precipitation decrease can be attributed mainly to human-influenced aerosol emissions. The drying is a robust outcome of a slowdown of the tropical meridional overturning circulation, which compensates for the aerosol-induced energy imbalance between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. These results provide compelling evidence of the prominent role of aerosols in shaping regional climate change over South Asia.