Can volcanic eruptions cause El Niño events?
In April, 1982 the volcano El Chichon erupted in Yucatan, Mexico. The gas and dust cloud from this volcano entered the stratosphere and circled the globe in a few weeks. This warm cloud interfered with the satellite measurements of sea surface temperature. The water appeared colder than it was because the satellites were sensing radiation emitted by the dust in the cold stratosphere instead of that from the warm water. By this time, El Niño of 1982-83 was already developing. Again in 1992, Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines erupted violently. As before, El Niño was already underway. These coincidences have led some, including Paul Handler the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, to suggest that large volcanic eruptions can cause El Niño events. Neville Nicholls of the Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre in Melbourne, Australia has shown there is no relationship between low-latitude volcanic eruptions and El Niño. Harry van Loon and his colleagues at the National Center for Atmo
