IN bastardi coment:
Joe vs the Volcano
ICELANDIC VOLCANO NOT LIKELY THE WEATHER-CHANGING TYPE
The Icelandic volcano is not falling into the same category as the volcanoes that I refer to in the triple crown of cooling, but much more of the "Mt. St. Helens" type when it comes to weather. Brilliant sunsets downwind from the ash clouds and the problems with airlines, yes, but a player in the overall weather around the globe? Not likely.
Well, then why not?
The tropical volcanoes are game changers, first to cool, then perhaps to warm, because they occur in an areas where the ash cloud can get "trapped" over the tropics, circulating around the world near the equator and reducing incoming solar radiation in these areas. This has a quick cooling effect on the Earth... you see, when you stop the warmest areas from warming, it is a much bigger card in the deck than the warming in the Arctic... because of energy considerations. However, there is a fight back that normally occurs... THE EL NINO. For the cooling in the tropics causes the easterlies to slow and warm water to pile up... Cold, then warmer. In the Arctic, it can be argued it's the opposite. The lower levels of the tropopause allow the ash cloud to get shot into the stratosphere, where the stability (remember the temperature increases in the stratosphere) gets the ash trapped for several years. The warming of the particles through the absorption of sunlight contributes to a negative AO. The reason this winter was so warm was we had the Nino come on... warming the tropics and the Arctic warmed... part naturally (there was a negative AAO for the winter in the southern hemisphere, our summer), but also the volcano may have had something to do with enhancing it. This forced a squeeze of cold between the warm areas in the tropics and the Arctic, but while the stage was set for the cold in between, the deck was really loaded for overall warming. The problem you have now is the "flip" that is going to occur, the cooling of the tropics and the Arctic with the cold PDO, hence the forecast I am making for a dramatic drop in overall global temperatures for the upcoming winter (AGAINST THE NORMALS), and through 2011, probably getting us to levels over the running mean not seen since before the Super Nino of '97-'98.
But this volcano is not like the above two.
I must remind you, that a post here before the increase in seismic activity back in the summer and fall alluded to what may be the link to the sun's weak cycle to all this. While space weather enthusiasts are jumping up and down about the return of sunspots, they have been very weak compared to the rapid upticks in sunspot numbers that have occurred before. It's late, it's weak still, and I have been watching this for over a year now, and it's still well behind where the forecasts are. It seems to me that the ideas I first learned about back in the early '90s, opined by some of the Eastern Bloc scientists about SS 24 and 25, are spot on so far. But this should be of no concern to anyone believing that co2 is the main driver in the AGW debate, since the sun is not affected by humans. I hear there is another brewing controversy... dermatologists are worried about the giant red spot on Jupiter being a acnelike blemish that they can't get rid of... Apparently there is a smoldering debate that is ready to break out between dermatologists and cosmetologists over what that giant red spot means, and how to get rid of it.
http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2010/04/15/nr.iceland.volcano.ash.cnn?hpt=Mid 
