This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
The Volcanism in the Arctic SysTem (VAST) project is investigating the effects of both tropical and Arctic volcanic eruptions on climate change in the Arctic. New paleoclimatic records are being developed and global climate models are being used to simulate the effects of volcanic eruptions. This research will add to VAST by developing and using a regional climate modeling system to understand better the detailed processes in the arctic climate system and to link the gap in scales between global climate change and point observations from paleo records. Researchers will use Polar WRF and tailor it to study Baffin Island, Iceland, and other locations where new paleo records indicate shifts in the climate system following large volcanic eruptions. They will study the sensitivity of the system to volcanic forcing and sea ice changes to determine, for example, what conditions are necessary for ice sheets to be initiated in Baffin Island. They will also study the transient climate evolution into a cooler state with the model forced by global climate model simulations. Once the regional modeling system is developed for these applications, they will use it to study the regional response to Icelandic eruptions that were smaller than the large 934- 939 Eldgjá and 1783-1784 Laki eruptions.
