Select Projects
Check out my Products for projects that led to research tools development, and my Publications for an extensive overview of published projects and select media features.
Left: Simulated concentrations of sulfur dioxide and sulfate aerosols over the Northern Hemisphere in the UK Earth System Model (UKESM) following a tropical eruption in 1995 injecting 10 Gt of sulfur dioxide. Right: Simulated cooling for the same tropical eruption happening in two different background climate.
Impact of climate change on the volcanic aerosol life cycle
We showed that the life cycle of volcanic sulfate aerosols might be modulated by future changes in atmospheric temperature, circulation and chemistry. As a result, large tropical volcanic eruptions could see their surface cooling effect amplified as Earth warms, but smaller, more frequent tropical eruptions will see their cooling effect dampened. This project was generously funded by the European Union, the Royal Society and the Sidney Sussex college.
References: Aubry et al. (Nat. Comms. 2021), Aubry et al. (Bull. Volc. 2022)
Impact of climate change the rise of volcanic columns
The height of eruptive volcanic columns is a critical control on volcanic hazards and climate impacts. Column height is governed by eruption intensity, but also atmospheric conditions which are rapidly changing as a consequence of anthropogenic activities. In this project, we explore how these changes might modulate the height of future volcanic columns. We find that higher intensities might be required for tropical eruptions to inject ash and gas directly into the stratosphere (above 10-16 km altitude) where they have a longer lifetime. This project was generously funded by the University of British Columbia and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
References: Aubry et al. (JGR 2016), Aubry et al. (GRL 2019)
Dynamics of volcanic columns in windy atmospheres
We produced new analogue, small-scale laboratory experiments and compiled an extensive dataset of eruption observations to improve our understanding of volcanic column dynamics. In particular, we investigated how the intensity, the atmosphere's stratification, and wind speed ultimately control the height reached by volcanic columns. We applied these new datasets to evaluate volcanic plume models and constrain the efficiency of turbulent entrainment in volcanic columns. This project was generously funded by the University of British Columbia, the Institut National des Sciences de l’Univers, and the Ecole Normale Superieure de Cachan.
References: Aubry et al. (JVGR 2017), Aubry et al. (GRL 2017), Aubry and Jellinek (EPSL 2018)
Left: Morphology of volcanic columns as a function of two key dynamical regime parameters. Red symbols show columns forming an umbrella cloud. Columns spreading downwind only are shown in green (overshoot) and blue (no overshoot).