Aerosol properties crucial to reconciling supervolcanic cooling estimates

<p>Abstract: Volcanic aerosols can cool Earth&#8217;s surface on a global scale, with the largest eruptions (eg Toba 74kya) linked to especially severe impacts on ecosystems and human survival. However, global climate simulations of super-eruption impacts have disagreed widely on post-eruption temperatures. As no super-eruption has occurred in ~26,000 years, little is known of their aerosol byproducts other than&#160;mass estimates from ice cores. Here we use GISS ModelE climate simulations to demonstrate that unconstrained aerosol properties cause substantial radiative forcing uncertainty. By comparing ModelE sensitivity tests to previous modeling studies, we suggest that a lack of consensus on super-eruption aerosol properties is a major reason for the disagreement in post-eruption cooling.</p>