STA 290 Seminar Series
Thursday, February 18th, 4:10pm, MSB 1147 (Colloquium Room)
Refreshments at 3:30pm in MSB 4110 (Statistics Lounge)
Speaker: Francisco Beltran (Lawrence Livermore Statistics Group)
Title: "Measuring the Effects of Volcanic Aerosols on Different Climate Variables."
Abstract: We present a statistical methodology to quantify the impact of volcanic activity on climate data. For a given climate variable of interest we deconvolve the climate data into important signals such as natural internal variability, external forcing signals, and trends. We focus on volcanic aerosol forcing over the period 1979 to 2013 and examine three cases of volcanic activity: (1) No volcanic activity; (2) El Chichón and Pinatubo eruptions only; and (3) late 20th and early 21st century volcanic activity. Using a Bayesian framework we jointly estimate the trend, the El Niño/Southern Oscillation signal, and volcanic signal. We apply this methodology to many observed and climate simulations from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 experiments for different climate variables. Our analysis clearly illustrates the effects of volcanic activity and the significant impact the different treatments of volcanic activity have on the trend for these climate variables.