A volcanic winter is the reduction in temperature caused by volcanic ash and droplets of sulfuric acid obscuring the sun and raising Earth's albedo (increasing the Earth's reflectivity of solar radiation) after a large particularly explosive type of volcanic eruption. Long-term cooling effects are primarily dependent upon injection of sulfide compounds in aerosol forms into the upper atmosphere—the stratosphere—the highest, least active levels of the lower atmosphere where little precipitation occurs, requiring a lengthy time to wash the aerosols out of the region. Stratospheric aerosols cool the surface and troposphere by reflecting solar radiation, warm the stratosphere by absorbing terrestrial radiation, and when combined with anthropogenic chlorine in the stratosphere, destroy ozone which moderates the effect of lower stratospheric warming. The variations in atmospheric warming and cooling results in changes in tropospheric and stratospheric circulation.
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Famous quotes containing the words volcanic and/or winter:
“Pity the planet, all joy gone
from this sweet volcanic cone;”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
“You ask if there is no doctrine of sorrow in my philosophy. Of acute sorrow I suppose that I know comparatively little. My saddest and most genuine sorrows are apt to be but transient regrets. The place of sorrow is supplied, perchance, by a certain hard and proportionately barren indifference. I am of kin to the sod, and partake of its dull patience,—in winter expecting the sun of spring.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)