“Iceland, soon to be Ashland“. Anthony Watts pastes a disappointingly non-alarmist NASA Picture of the Day post about the Eyjafjallajökull Volcano in Iceland, which is continuing to erupt. The real environmental impact of volcanic eruptions occurs when sulfur dioxide reaches the stratosphere, which is not happening in this instance.

The Eyjafjallajökull Volcano in Iceland ash cloud from space.

Sulfur dioxide turns into tiny droplets of sulfuric acid. These light-colored droplets cool the Earth by reflecting sunlight back to space. Because it doesn’t rain in the stratosphere, the droplets can linger for months or years. Massive eruptions can cool the global average surface temperature by several degrees for several years.

In most cases, though, high-latitude eruptions have little influence on global climate even when they are explosive enough to inject sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere; the reflective particles rarely have a chance to spread around the globe. Stratospheric air generally rises above tropical latitudes, spreads toward the poles, and then sinks back toward the lower atmosphere at high latitudes.

The article references a 2006 post on RealClimate.org by Anthony’s ‘nemesis’, the actual climatologist Gavin Schmidt. So I guess he’s off the lying commie world gubmint conspirators list. Or is this one of those posts that are intended to ‘prove’ that he doesn’t always attack climatologists?

I’m trying to imagine Anthony explaining something is a way that Gavin would consider accurate and unbiased and link to…