European climate response to tropical volcanic eruptions over the last half millennium

Abstract

We analyse the winter and summer climatic signal following 15 major tropical volcanic eruptions over the last half millennium based on multi-proxy reconstructions for Europe. During the first and second post-eruption years we find significant continental scale summer cooling and somewhat drier conditions over Central Europe. In the Northern Hemispheric winter the volcanic forcing induces an atmospheric circulation response that significantly follows a positive NAO state connected with a significant overall warm anomaly and wetter conditions over Northern Europe. Our findings compare well with GCM studies as well as observational studies, which mainly cover the substantially shorter instrumental period and thus include a limited set of major eruptions.