Professor Hyemi Kim's research team has published a paper in the prestigious academic journal 'Nature Communications.'
"Volcanic Eruptions: Beyond Natural Disasters, a Driver of Climate Change"
Provides Important Clues for Future Climate Change Response
A research team led by Professor Hyemi Kim from the Department of Science has successfully identified how volcanic eruption impacts on the Earth's climate systems. The team uncovered the mechanism by which volcanic activity influences the immediate occurrence of El Niño and published their findings in the prestigious academic journal Nature Communications.
It has been widely known in academia that large-scale volcanic eruptions can trigger El Niño. However, the exact scientific reason why El Niño occurs immediately after a volcanic eruption had not been clearly understood, and existing climate models had limitations in accurately simulating this phenomenon.
Professor Hyemi Kim’s research team analyzed the impact of volcanic forcing on El Niño responses using large-scale ensemble climate simulations. They discovered that the Madden–Julian Oscillation (MJO), a tropical phenomenon, plays a crucial role in triggering El Niño. After a volcanic eruption, moisture distribution changes in the Indo-Pacific region increase the likelihood of the MJO activity by about 35%, which in turn raises the probability of El Niño occurrence to approximately 98%.
This significant finding provides a clearer explanation of the mechanism linking volcanic activity and El Niño. It also suggests that incorporating the role of the MJO into climate models is essential for improving their accuracy.
Understanding the climate response triggered by volcanic activity is an urgent task, as it allows for the prediction of the potential impacts of climate engineering technologies. As part of efforts to address global warming caused by climate change, research on artificially manipulating the climate through climate engineering is actively being conducted, with particular attention on "man-made volcano" technology. This technology involves injecting aerosols (tiny particles in the atmosphere) into the stratosphere to counteract the warming effect, mimicking the impact of large-scale volcanic eruptions.
However, the potential environmental risks of man-made volcano technology remain highly uncertain. If greenhouse gas-induced warming strengthens the Madden–Julian Oscillation (MJO) or the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), climate change could become even more complex and unpredictable. Professor Kim’s research provides critical insights into future climate mechanisms, offering significant implications for both climate change and climate engineering. Furthermore, it is expected to play a key role in refining climate models and predicting extreme weather events and precipitation pattern changes.
The study, titled “Volcanically forced Madden–Julian oscillation triggers the immediate onset of El Niño,” was conducted as a collaborative effort between Professor Hyemi Kim, POSTECH, Seoul National University, and Cornell University, with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.