Volcanoes' impact on climate underestimated?

MSNBC.com: Volcanoes' impact on climate underestimated?

Volcanic eruptions might affect Earth's climate more than thought by releasing far more weather-altering particles than scientists' suspected, new research finds.

To help tease out the influence of volcanoes on global climate, researchers investigated the huge eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland on March 20, 2010. They monitored the volcano's enormous plume, which spread all over Europe, from a research station in France.

The eruption rapidly ejected large ash particles into the atmosphere. The researchers then analyzed how many secondary particles this ash generated upon reacting chemically with other components of the atmosphere. The particles created from the eruptions were mostly composed of sulfuric acid and grew over time.

If sulfuric acid particles become large enough, they can behave as seeds for cloud formation. Clouds, in turn, can alter the amount and type of precipitation an area receives.

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"Most previous studies did not properly account for low-altitude impacts of volcanoes," researcher Julien Boulon, a physicist at the Laboratory of Meteorology Physics of the French National Center for Scientific Research and Blaise Pascal University in Aubiere, France, told OurAmazingPlanet.

The findings, detailed online Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, point to the potentially broader climate influence that volcanoes could have.