Do Climate Models Support Claims of Volcanic Global Catastrophes?

Abstract Climate models have been claimed to support the popular belief that large volcanic eruptions greatly imperil human populations worldwide. These models provide estimates of historical post‐eruption climates where observations and paleorecords are lacking. However, as we show, simulations of the last millennium's largest eruptions broadly disagree on resulting climates and typically produce more extreme outcomes than the moderate cooling and ordinary precipitation conditions recorded in tree rings. We demonstrate that strong cooling greatly strengthens the post‐eruption precipitation anomalies in simulations. Conversely, simulations with paleoproxy‐consistent volcanic surface cooling show post‐eruption precipitation to be unexceptional at most locations. Climate models hence do not substantiate the claims that intense eruption‐induced wet and dry anomalies have caused widespread historical catastrophes. We suggest that future assessments of global volcanic risk focus on impacts of moderate cooling and on equatorial Africa and South America, which evidence the only regional precipitation responses that are robust across simulations.