This work is recently published in Journal of Climate. 

 

Monsoon rainfall imposes great impacts on society since it affects over two-thirds of the world's population. Insufficient monsoon rainfall brings drought and famines to many parts of the world, while too much rainfall causes floods.

 

The eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815 and Mount Pinatubo in 1991 resulted in decreased global precipitation, especially over the global monsoon regions, including the Asia-Australia monsoon, the America monsoon and the Africa monsoon regions. Uncovering the relationship between volcanic eruptions and monsoon precipitation relies on the proxy-based (e.g. tree ring, coral, etc.) paleoclimate reconstructions and numerical simulations during the last millennium. However, recent studies have found significant differences between the results of model simulations and reconstructions, but the reasons remain unclear.

 

ZUO and her mentor Prof. ZHOU Tianjun and Associate Prof. MAN Wenmin analyzed large sets of climate model simulations to investigate the impact of volcanic eruptions on tropical sea surface temperature and global monsoon precipitation under three different ENSO phases. The team found that under ENSO neutral and warm phases initial conditions, the Pacific favors an El Nino-like anomaly after volcanic eruptions, while La Nina-like sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies tend to occur following eruptions under ENSO cold phase initial condition. 

 

They further put forward the underlying mechanism. Since the cold initial condition is associated with stronger upper ocean temperature stratification over the eastern Pacific than normal, the easterly anomalies triggered by surface cooling over the tropical South America continent can generate changes in SST more efficiently, causing La Nina-like SST anomalies. Whereas under warm initial condition, the easterly anomalies fail to develop and the westerly anomalies still play a dominant role, thus forms an El Nino-like SST anomaly. Such SST response further regulates the monsoon precipitation changes through atmospheric teleconnection, which will further affect the intensity and sign of precipitation response in submonsoon regions. 

 Schematic diagram of global monsoon precipitation responses to volcanic eruptions occurred during different ENSO phases. (ZUO Meng)

 

"Our results imply that the SST response to volcanic eruptions can critically depend on the state of ENSO phases in the pre-eruption winter. We suggest that when analyzing the SST and monsoon responses to volcanic eruptions in models or observations, special attention needs to be paid to the background oceanic states during the pre-eruption period," ZUO concludes the findings of their study.