The importance of ENSO phase during volcanic eruptions for detection and attribution

Abstract

Comparisons of the observed global-scale cooling following recent volcanic eruptions to that simulated by climate models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5 (CMIP5) indicate that the models overestimate the magnitude of the global temperature response to volcanic eruptions. Here we show that this overestimation can be explained as a sampling issue, arising because all large eruptions since 1951 coincided with El Niño events, which cause global-scale warming that partially counteracts the volcanically induced cooling. By subsampling the CMIP5 models according to the observed El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phase during each eruption, we find that the simulated global temperature response to volcanic forcing is consistent with observations. Volcanic eruptions pose a particular challenge for the detection and attribution methodology, as their surface impacts are short-lived and hence can be confounded by ENSO. Our results imply that detection and attribution studies must carefully consider sampling biases due to internal climate variability.