Unlocking links between predicting explosive volcanism and forecasting its effects on climate

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Since the destruction of Pompeii in AD 79, volcanic hazards in the form of devastating pyroclastic flows have captured the attention and imaginations of scientists and non-scientists alike for generations. The global economic consequences of the long-lived ash cloud related to the relatively small Eyjafjallajökull eruption in the spring of 2010, however, caught the world off guard entirely and demonstrated gaps in our understanding of eruption dynamics, as well as new challenges for assessing risks in an increasingly globalized world. That the Little Ice Age, which led to famines and associated vast population declines across Europe between 1300 and 1850, is now best explained as a consequence of novel climate effects related to extensive explosive volcanism particularly concentrated around the Pacific rim makes unease related to the 2010 event more acute.