LATITUDINAL VARIATIONS OF VOLCANIC SULFATE AND ITS INFLUENCE ON AIR TEMPERATURE

Abstract

The climate change is strongly affected by the increase of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorinated gases. Other important atmospheric factors of climate change are stratospheric sulfur aerosols, whose ability to reflect solar radiation back to the space cause cooling effect. Sulfur aerosols have common natural and anthropogenic origin. The volcanos are a major source of particles in the stratosphere, whose lifetime depends on various atmospheric processes � water condensation, rains and winds. Chapanov determines long-term influence of Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) on global volcanic sulfate with periodicity 93-230 years in [1]. A new monthly volcanic forcing dataset had been created by Ammann et al. [8,9]. This dataset presents the seasonal and latitudinal influence on global climate, where negative radiative forcing from volcanic activity is visible in the early 20th century and after 1960. The monthly volcanic data cover the period between 1890 and 1999. The volcanic aerosols are calculated in 64 zonal band with latitude step of 2.8 degrees. The variations of sulfur aerosols over European latitude belt (39.2 N � 56 N) are compared with mean temperature and cycles of solar Indices. Common temperature and sulfur cycles are investigated by means of the Method of Partial Fourier Approximation (PFA). These cycles have good agreement in 11 narrow frequency bands, whose periodicity are between 2.9 and 36.6 years. Possible use of the results in climate study and forecast is discussed.