Source: RUTGERS, THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW JERSEY submitted to NRP
IMPACTS ON CLIMATE AND AGRICULTURE OF GEOENGINEERING, VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS, AND NUCLEAR WINTER
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
COMPLETE
Funding Source
HATCH
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
1006616
Grant No.
(N/A)
Cumulative Award Amt.
(N/A)
Proposal No.
(N/A)
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Project Start Date
Jul 1, 2015
Project End Date
Sep 30, 2019
Grant Year
(N/A)
Program Code
[(N/A)]- (N/A)
Recipient Organization
RUTGERS, THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW JERSEY
3 RUTGERS PLZA
NEW BRUNSWICK,NJ 08901-8559
Performing Department
Environmental Sciences
Non Technical Summary
The issue of climate change will certainly affect the quality of life in New Jersey, including the environment, agriculture, and water resources. The proposed work will address the causes of climate change, potential climate change responses to geoengineering, volcanic eruptions, and nuclear war, and how climate change will impact us. The work will be related to agriculture, in that it will include the production of future scenarios of climate change that can be used to plan for different agricultural practices, and will consider geoengineering techniques to control the climate, which will affect agriculture. The work will also include modeling of the impacts of various climate change scenarios on agricultural production using crop models. The studies of soil moisture and irrigation will have implications in many locations, including New Jersey.
Animal Health Component
(N/A)
Research Effort Categories
Basic
100%
Applied
(N/A)
Developmental
(N/A)
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
1320430207090%
1021599106010%
Knowledge Area
102 - Soil, Plant, Water, Nutrient Relationships; 132 - Weather and Climate;

Subject Of Investigation
0430 - Climate; 1599 - Grain crops, general/other;

Field Of Science
2070 - Meteorology and climatology; 1060 - Biology (whole systems);
Goals / Objectives
The mission of the NJAES is "To enhance the vitality, health, sustainability and overall quality of life in New Jersey by developing and delivering practical, effective solutions to current and future challenges to agriculture; fisheries; food; natural resources; environments; public health; and economic, community, and youth development." The national research priority areas for the USDA National Institutes for Food and Agriculture include Global Food Security and Hunger and Climate Change. The work proposed here will address both of of these priority areas. The issue of climate change will certainly affect the quality of life in New Jersey, including the environment, agriculture, and water resources. The proposed work will address the causes of climate change, potential climate change responses to geoengineering, volcanic eruptions, and nuclear war, and how climate change will impact us. The work will be related to agriculture, in that it will include the production of future scenarios of climate change that can be used to plan for different agricultural practices, and will consider geoengineering techniques to control the climate, which will affect agriculture. The work will also include modeling of the impacts of various climate change scenarios on agricultural production using crop models. The studies of soil moisture and irrigation will have implications in many locations, including New Jersey.
Project Methods
The research will be conducted with data analysis and computer modeling. We will use general circulation models of the climate system forced with injections of stratospheric aerosols from volcanic eruptions, geoengineering, and nuclear war. We will use the DSSAT and CLM crop models to calculate how agricultural productivity will change in response to these climate changes.

Progress 07/01/15 to 09/30/19

Outputs
Target Audience:Our target audiences are the people of the world and the scientific community. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Brian Zambri andJoshua Coupe earned their M.S. degrees, and Corey J. Gabriel andBrian Zambri earned their Ph.D. degrees.Lili Xia, Joanna Slawinska, and Brian Zambri worked as postdoctoral fellows. All of these were training and professional development. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The most important outcome was that results from this research on the humanitarian impacts of the use of nuclear weapons were presented in many papers and talks leading up the deliberationsin 2017 at the United Nations, which led to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. As of this writing, 32 nations have signed and ratified the treaty. When 50 nations have ratified it, the treaty will come into force. The Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 was awarded to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons"for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons." So our work contributed to this Nobel Peace Prize and to the goal of making the world more peaceful by eliminating nuclear weapons. And we continue our work by publishing papers and communicating to the public and the press about this issue. Of course, we communicate to the research community by publishing journal article on all our research. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? We have published many papers and given many conference presentations and public talks addressing all the topics in the goals, the effects of volcanic eruptions, proposed geoengineering schemes, and nuclear war on climate and on agricultural productivity.

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Yu, Pengfei, Owen B. Toon, Charles G. Bardeen, Yunqian Zhu, Karen H. Rosenlof, Robert W. Portmann, Troy D. Thornberry, Ru-Shan Gao, Sean M. Davis, Eric T. Wolf, Joost de Gouw, David A. Peterson, Michael D. Fromm, and Alan Robock, 2019: Black carbon lofts wildfire smoke high into the stratosphere to form a persistent plume. Science, 365, 587-590, doi:10.1126/science.aax1748.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Zambri, Brian, Alan Robock, Michael J. Mills, and Anja Schmidt, 2019a: Modeling the 17831784 Laki eruption in Iceland, Part I: Aerosol evolution and global stratospheric circulation impacts. J. Geophys. Res. Atmos., 124, 6750-6769, doi:10.1029/ 2018JD029553.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Zambri, Brian, Alan Robock, Michael J. Mills, and Anja Schmidt, 2019b: Modeling the 17831784 Laki eruption in Iceland, Part II: Climate impacts. J. Geophys. Res. Atmos., 124, 6770-6790, doi:10.1029/2018JD029554
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Coupe, Joshua, Charles G. Bardeen, Alan Robock, and Owen B. Toon, 2019: Nuclear winter responses to global nuclear war in the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model Version 4 and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies ModelE. J. Geophys. Res. Atmos., 124, 8522-8543, doi:10.1029/2019JD030509.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Toon, Owen B., Charles G. Bardeen, Alan Robock, Lili Xia, Hans Kristensen, Matthew McKinzie, R. J. Peterson, Cheryl Harrison, Nicole S. Lovenduski, and Richard P. Turco, 2019: Rapid expansion of nuclear arsenals by Pakistan and India portends regional and global catastrophe. Science Advances, 5, eaay5478, doi:10.1126/sciadv.aay5478.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2019 Citation: Baldwin, Mark P., Thomas Birner, Guy Brasseur, John Burrows, Neal Butchart, Rolando Garcia, Marvin Geller, Lesley Gray, Kevin Hamilton, Nili Harnik, Michaela I. Hegglin, Ulrike Langematz, Alan Robock, Kaoru Sato, and Adam Scaife, 2019: Advances in understanding the stratosphere and mesosphere, 19202020. Meteorological Monographs, in press.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2019 Citation: Robock, Alan, Owen B. Toon, and Charles G. Bardeen, 2019: Comment on Climate impact of a regional nuclear weapons exchange: An improved assessment based on detailed source calculations by Reisner et al. J. Geophys. Res. Atmos., in press.


Progress 10/01/17 to 09/30/18

Outputs
Target Audience:Research community Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Brian Zambri received his Ph.D. and continued to work as a postdoc for another 6 months. Two new graduate students and a postdoc were added to my research team. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Publishing journal articles, giving talks at professional conferences. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Continue doing the same things.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Wecontinue to study the effects of volcanic eruptions, geonengineering, and nuclear war on climate an agriculture. For example, we found that rapid termination of stratospheric geoengineering would fracture ecosystems, and could lead to extinctions. This is the first paper to examine the effects ofstratospheric geoengineering on ecosytems.

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Rodr�guez-Vega, Albeht, Juan Carlos Antu�a-Marrero, Michel d. S. Mesquita, Alan Robock, Thomas Toniazzo, and Odd Helge Otter�, 2018: How well does the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting Interim Reanalysis represent the surface air temperature in Cuban weather stations? Int. J. Climatol., 38, 1216-1233, doi:10.1002/joc.5239.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Newhall, Christopher, Stephen Self, and Alan Robock, 2018: Anticipating future Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) 7 eruptions and their chilling impacts. Geosphere, 14, No. 2, 1-32, doi:10.1130/GES01513.1.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Trisos, Christopher H., Giuseppe Amatulli, Jessica Gurevitch, Alan Robock, Lili Xia, and Brian Zambri, 2018: Potentially dangerous consequences for biodiversity of solar geoengineering implementation and termination. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2, 475-482, doi:10.1038/s41559-017-0431-0.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Slawinska, Joanna, and Alan Robock, 2018: Impact of volcanic eruptions on decadal to centennial fluctuations of Arctic sea ice extent during the last millennium and on initiation of the Little Ice Age. J. Climate, 31, 2145-2167, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0498.1.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Marshall, Lauren, Anja Schmidt, Matthew Toohey, Ken Carslaw, Graham Mann, Michael Sigl, Myriam Khodri, Claudia Timmreck, Davide Zanchettin, William Ball, Slimane Bekki, James Brooke, Sandip Dhomse, Colin Johnson, Jean-Francois Lamarque, Allegra LeGrande, Michael Mills, Ulrike Niemeier, James O. Pope, Virginie Poulain, Alan Robock, Eugene Rozanov, Andrea Stenke, Timofei Sukhodolov, Simone Tilmes, Kostas Tsigaridis, and Fiona Tummon, 2018: Multi-model comparison of the volcanic sulfate deposition from the 1815 eruption of Mt. Tambora. Atmos. Chem. Phys., 18, 2307-2328, doi:10.5194/acp-2017-729.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Prata, Fred, Alan Robock, and Richard Hamblyn, 2018: The sky in Edvard Munchs The Scream. Bull. Amer. Meteorol. Soc., 99, 1377-1390, doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-17-0144.1.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Kravitz, Ben, Alan Robock, Olivier Boucher, Mark Lawrence, John C. Moore, Ulrike Niemeier, Trude Storelvmo, Simone Tilmes, and Robert Wood, 2018: The Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project - introduction to the second special issue. Atmos. Chem. Phys., 18, 9 pp., doi:10.5194/acp-special_issue376-preface.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Kravitz, Ben, Philip J. Rasch, Hailong Wang, Alan Robock, Corey Gabriel, Olivier Boucher, Jason N. S. Cole, Jim Haywood, Duoying Ji, Andy Jones, Andrew Lenton, John C. Moore, Helene Muri, Ulrike Niemeier, Steven Phipps, Hauke Schmidt, Shingo Watanabe, Shuting Yang, and Jin-Ho Yoon, 2018: The climate effects of increasing ocean albedo: An idealized representation of solar geoengineering. Atmos. Chem. Phys., 18, 13,097-13,113, doi:10.5194/acp-18-13097-2018.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Robock, Alan, and Brian Zambri, 2018: Did smoke from city fires in World War II cause global cooling? J. Geophys. Res. Atmos., 123, 10,314-10,325, doi:10.1029/ 2018JD028922.


Progress 10/01/16 to 09/30/17

Outputs
Target Audience:Research Community Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Five graduate students worked on their Ph.D. dissertations, and one, Corey Gabriel,completed his. Two postdocs, Lili Xia and Joanna Slawinska, workedon this project. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Writing journal articles, giving presentations at conferences, and giving invited lectures. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?See proposal.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? We have studied the impacts of volcanic eruptions, geoengineering, and nuclear war on agriculture and natural vegetation.For example, reducing insolation has been proposed as a geoengineering response to global warming. In a recent publication of Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, our group presented the results of climate model simulations of a unique Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project Testbed experiment to investigate the benefits and risks of a scheme that would brighten certain oceanic regions.

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Rodr�guez-Vega, Albeht, Juan Carlos Antu�a-Marrero, Michel d. S. Mesquita, Alan Robock, Thomas Toniazzo, and Odd Helge Otter�, 2017: How well does the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting Interim Reanalysis represent the surface air temperature in Cuban weather stations? Int. J. Climatol., doi:10.1002/joc.5239.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Xia, Lili, Peer J. Nowack, Alan Robock, and Simone Tilmes, 2017: Impacts of stratospheric sulfate geoengineering on tropospheric ozone. Atmos. Chem. Phys., 17, 11,913-11,928, doi:10.5194/acp-17-11913-2017.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Khodri, Myriam, Takeshi Izumo, J�r�me Vialard, Serge Janicot, Christophe Cassou, Matthieu Lengaigne, Juliette Mignot, Guillaume Gastineau, Eric Guilyardi, Nicolas Lebas, Alan Robock, and Michael J. McPhaden, 2017: Tropical explosive volcanic eruptions can trigger El Ni�o by cooling tropical Africa. Nature Communications, 8, 778, doi:10.1038/s41467-017-00755-6.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Zambri, Brian, Allegra LeGrande, Alan Robock, and Joanna Slawinska, 2017: Northern Hemisphere winter warming and summer monsoon reduction after volcanic eruptions over the last millennium. J. Geophys. Res. Atmos., 122, 7971-7989, doi:10.1002/2017JD026728.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Toon, Owen B., Alan Robock, Michael Mills, and Lili Xia, 2017: Asia treads the nuclear path, unaware that self-assured destruction would result from nuclear war. J. Asian Studies, 76, 437-456, doi:10.1017/S0021911817000080.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Gabriel, Corey J., Alan Robock, Lili Xia, Brian Zambri, and Ben Kravitz, 2017: The G4Foam experiment: Global climate impacts of regional ocean albedo modification. Atmos. Chem. Phys., 17, 595-613, doi:10.5194/acp-17-595-2017.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Antu�a-Marrero, Juan Carlos, Eduardo Landulfo, Ren� Estevan, Boris Barja, Alan Robock, Eli�n Wolfram, Pablo Ristori, Barclay Clemesha, Francesco Zaratti, Ricardo Forno, Errico Armandillo, �lvaro E. Bastidas, �ngel M. de Frutos Baraja, David N. Whiteman, Eduardo Quel, Henrique M. J. Barbosa, Fabio Lopes, Elena Montilla-Rosero, and Juan L. Guerrero-Rascado, 2017: LALINET: The first Latin American-born regional atmospheric observational network. Bull. Amer. Meteorol. Soc., 98, 1255-1275, doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-15-00228.1.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Robock, Alan, 2016: Albedo enhancement by stratospheric sulfur injection: More research needed. Earths Future, 4, doi:10.1002/2016EF000407.


Progress 10/01/15 to 09/30/16

Outputs
Target Audience:My research is published in peer-reviewed literature, and much of it is policy relevant. My audience includes other reseachers and the public. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Two graduate students, Corey Gabriel and Brian Zambri, are working on their Ph.D. dissertations. Two postdocs, Lili Xia and Joanna Slawinska, are working on this project. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Writing journal articles, giving presentations at conferences, and giving invited lectures. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We will continue to conduct climate model simulations of the impacts of volcanic eruptions and geoengineering on climate. We will use agricultural models to study the impacts on crop production around the world.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? We are studying the impacts of volcanic eruptions, geoengineering, and nuclear war on climate, agriculture, and natural vegetation. We have designed climate model intercomparison projects to study the impacts of volcanic eruptions and geoengineering. Climate modeling groups from around the world will be carrying out standardized simulations, and by comparing and analyzing the similarities and differences in the output, we will have a better understanding of how such natural and human injections of particles into the stratosphere will affect climate. We have also shown that putting sulfate particles into the stratosphere, in an attempt to cool Earth, will also slightly increase the uptake of carbon by plants on land. Geoengineering will not have a strong impact on El Niño. Large tropical volcanic eruptions will warm Northern Hemisphere continents in the next winter, and will reduce summer monsoon rainfall in the next summer over Africa and Asia, with potential impacts on agriculture.

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2015 Citation: Gabriel, C. J., and A. Robock, 2015: Stratospheric geoengineering impacts on El Ni�o/Southern Oscillation. Atmos. Chem. Phys., 15, 11,949-11,966, doi:10.5194/acp-15-11949-2015.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2015 Citation: Kravitz, Ben, Alan Robock, Simone Tilmes, Olivier Boucher, Jason M. English, Peter J. Irvine, Andy Jones, Mark G. Lawrence, Michael MacCracken, Helene Muri, John C. Moore, Ulrike Niemeier, Steven J. Phipps, Jana Sillmann, Trude Storelvmo, Hailong Wang, and Shingo Watanabe, 2015: The Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (GeoMIP6): Simulation design and preliminary results. Geosci. Model Dev., 8, 33793392, doi:10.5194/gmd-8-3379-2015.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Antu�a-Marrero, Juan Carlos, Odd Helge Otter�, Alan Robock, and Michel d. S. Mesquita, 2015: Modelled and observed sea surface temperature trends for the Caribbean and Antilles. Int. J. Climatol., 36, 1873-1886, doi:10.1002/joc.4466.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Xia, Lili, Alan Robock, Simone Tilmes, and Ryan R. Neely III, 2016: Stratospheric sulfate geoengineering could enhance the terrestrial photosynthesis rate. Atmos. Chem. Phys., 16, 1479-1489, doi:10.5194/acp-16-1479-2016.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Raible, Christoph C., Stefan Br�nnimann, Renate Auchmann, Philip Brohan, Thomas L. Fr�licher, Hans-F. Graf, Phil Jones, J�rg Luterbacher, Stefan Muthers, Alan Robock, Stephen Self, Adjat Sudrajat, Claudia Timmreck, and Martin Wegmann, 2016: Tambora 1815 as a test case for high impact volcanic eruptions: Earth system effects. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, doi:10.1002/wcc.407.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Zanchettin, Davide, Myriam Khodri, Claudia Timmreck, Matthew Toohey, Anja Schmidt, Edwin P. Gerber, Gabriele Hegerl, Alan Robock, Francesco S. Pausata, William T. Ball, Susanne E. Bauer, Slimane Bekki, Sandip S. Dhomse, Allegra N. LeGrande, Graham W. Mann, Lauren Marshall, Michael Mills, Marion Marchand, Ulrike Niemeier, Virginie Paulain, Eugene Rozanov, Angelo Rubino, Andrea Stenke, Kostas Tsigaridis, and Fiona Tummon, 2016: The Model Intercomparison Project on the climatic response to Volcanic forcing (VolMIP): Experimental design and forcing input data for CMIP6. Geosci. Model Dev., 9, 2701-2719, doi:10.5194/gmd-9-2701-2016.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2016 Citation: Toon, Owen B., Alan Robock, Michael Mills, and Lili Xia, 2016: Asia treads the nuclear path, unaware that self-assured destruction would result from nuclear war. J. Asian Studies, in press.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Zambri, Brian, and Alan Robock, 2016: Winter warming and summer monsoon reduction after volcanic eruptions in Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5 (CMIP5) simulations. Geophys. Res. Lett., 43, 10,920-10,928, doi:10.1029/2016GL070460.


Progress 07/01/15 to 09/30/15

Outputs
Target Audience:Research Community Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Two graduate students, Corey Gabriel and Brian Zambri, are working on their Ph.D. dissertations. Two postdocs, Lili Xia and Joanna Slawinska, are working on this project. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Writing journal articles, giving presentations at conferences, and giving invited lectures. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?See proposal.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? We are studying the impacts of volcanic eruptions, geoengineering, and nuclear war on agriculture and natural vegetation.

Publications