Sunday, September 13, 2020

FAKE NEWS 
“Canada has just criminalized all CV19 measures requiring masks, distancing, quarantining & vaccines.”



By Madison Czopek September 11, 2020

No, Canada did not criminalize COVID-19 restrictions


• The Canadian government has not enacted a law that criminalizes COVID-19 restrictions or prevents enforcement of those guidelines.

• There are places in Canada where you can be fined for disobeying COVID-19 public health orders.

• The post appears to be referring to a proclamation issued by a “council of citizens’ assemblies.”

See the sources for this fact-check

Facebook posts stated on September 9, 2020 in a post:

A Facebook post claims Canada passed new legislation against COVID-19 public health orders.

"Canada has just criminalized all CV19 measures requiring masks, distancing, quarantining & vaccines — meaning they cannot force/fine you to wear a mask etc," the text on the photo post reads. "Any attempt to impose such measures is now considered a CRIME."

That’s not true. The caption of the post mentions a "law" passed by "a council of citizens’ assemblies" on Sept. 8. The actions of this group do not have legitimate standing in Canada.

The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

Claims about this new "law" have been publicized by a group called the Republic of Kanata, which describes itself as "a new society growing up within the shell of the old. Citizens are united within a new jurisdiction in local Republican Assemblies that replace the existing Canadian government structures."

Republic of Kanata says its law "struck down and criminalized" all COVID-19 measures, such as those requiring masks, social distancing or quarantining. The law also encourages people to "actively resist" coronavirus regulations.

According to a Republic of Kanata press release, "The law was issued by the National Council of Common Law Assemblies (NCCLA), which unites more than forty such Assemblies across Canada within the jurisdiction of the Republic of Kanata."

Although a group of people want this to be law, it is not.

The group has no legal authority in Canada. A spokesperson for the Canadian House of Commons confirmed that no such law has been passed to criminalize public health measures for COVID-19

The post also incorrectly claims that Canadian cities and provinces can no longer implement COVID-19 safety requirements or impose fines for violating those measures.

In several places in Canada, there are fines and other penalties for violating the public health orders designed to slow the spread of COVID-19.

In Canada’s Alberta province, fines for violating orders for self-isolation begin at $1,000. Canada’s capital city of Ottawa has required masks in enclosed public spaces since July, and police officers can impose $200 fines.

On Sept. 10 — two days after the Facebook post’s supposed-law criminalized the COVID-19 measures — officials in Quebec announced the police would begin handing out fines to people who aren’t wearing masks in accordance with public health regulations.
Our ruling

An image on Facebook says, "Canada has just criminalized all CV19 measures requiring masks, distancing, quarantining & vaccines — meaning they cannot force/fine you to wear a mask etc. Any attempt to impose such measures is now considered a CRIME."

The caption of the post refers to a "law" passed by a "a council of citizens’ assemblies" that is not real, enforceable law in Canada. People can also be fined for violating the public health orders designed to slow the spread of COVID-19 in many places in Canada.

We rate this claim False.

Our Sources

CBC, "Quebec will hand out fines to those who refuse to wear masks," Sept. 10, 2020

CTV News Montreal, "Quebec will fine those who don’t wear masks," Sept. 10, 2020

Alberta, "Help prevent the spread," accessed Sept. 10, 2020

Global News, "Ottawa council passes mask bylaw with fines of $200 for violators," July 15, 2020

Ottawa, "Temporary Mandatory Mask By-law (By-law No. 2020 – 186)," accessed Sept. 11, 2020

Ottawa Public Health, "Learn more on the Temporary Mandatory Mask By-law," accessed Sept. 11, 2020

Email interview with Canadian House of Commons spokesperson, Sept. 11, 2020

Canada Department of Justice, "Government of Canada’s response to COVID-19," accessed Sept. 11, 2020

Republic of Kanata, "Republic of Kanata," accessed Sept. 11, 2020

Republic of Kanata, "Media," Sept. 8, 2020

YouTube, "National Law in Canada Strikes Down Police State Measures, Empowers Citizens to Resist," Sept. 7, 2020
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COVIDIOTS
Dakotas lead US in virus growth as both reject mask rules
Coronavirus infections in the Dakotas are growing faster than anywhere else in the nation

STEPHEN GROVES and DAVE KOLPACK Associated Press
12 September 2020


SIOUX FALLS, S.D. -- Coronavirus infections in the Dakotas are growing faster than anywhere else in the nation, fueling impassioned debates over masks and personal freedom after months in which the two states avoided the worst of the pandemic.

The argument over masks raged this week in Brookings, South Dakota, as the city council considered requiring face coverings in businesses. The city was forced to move its meeting to a local arena to accommodate intense interest, with many citizens speaking against it, before the mask requirement ultimately passed.

Amid the brute force of the pandemic, health experts warn that the infections must be contained before care systems are overwhelmed. North Dakota and South Dakota lead the country in new cases per capita over the last two weeks, ranking first and second respectively, according to Johns Hopkins University researchers.

South Dakota has also posted some of the country's highest positivity rates for COVID-19 tests in the last week — over 17 percent — an indication that there are more infections than tests are catching.

Infections have been spurred by schools and universities reopening and mass gatherings like the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, which drew hundreds of thousands of people from across the country.

“It is not a surprise that South Dakota has one of the highest (COVID-19) reproduction rates in the country,” Brookings City Council member Nick Wendell said as he commented on the many people who forgo masks in public.

The Republican governors of both states have eschewed mask requirements, tapping into a spirit of independence hewn from enduring the winters and storms of the Great Plains.

New evidence shows young children can transmit COVID-19
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study identified that 12 children infected at child care centers went on to infect 12 others, including parents and siblings.

The Dakotas were not always a hot spot. For months, the states appeared to avoid the worst of the pandemic, watching from afar as it raged through large cities. But spiking infection rates have fanned out across the nation, from the East Coast to the Sun Belt and now into the Midwest, where states like Iowa and Kansas are also dealing with surges.

When the case count stayed low during the spring and early summer, people grew weary of constantly taking precautions, said Dr. Benjamin Aaker, president of the South Dakota State Medical Association.

“People have a tendency to become complacent,” he said. “Then they start to relax the things that they were doing properly, and that’s when the increase in cases starts to go up."


Health officials point out that the COVID-19 case increases have been among younger groups that are not hospitalized at high rates. But infections have not been contained to college campuses.

“College students work in places where the vulnerable live, such as nursing homes,” said Dr. Joel Walz, the Grand Forks, North Dakota, city and county health officer. “Some of them are nursing students who are doing rotations where they’re going to see people who are really at risk. I worry about that.”

Over 1,000 students at the states' four largest universities (the University of North Dakota, North Dakota State University, South Dakota State University and University of South Dakota) left campus to quarantine after being exposed to the virus, according to data released by the schools. The Sturgis rally also spread infections across the region, with health officials in 12 states reporting over 300 cases among people who attended the event.

But requiring masks has been controversial. In Brookings, opponents said they believed the virus threat was not as serious as portrayed and that a mandate was a violation of civil liberties.

“There are a lot of things we have in life that we have to deal with that cause death,” business owner Teresa Holloman told the council. “We live in America, and we have certain inalienable rights.”

Though Brookings passed its ban, another hot spot — North Dakota's Morton County, just west of the capital city of Bismarck — soundly rejected a mask requirement after citizens spoke against it. Brookings may be the lone municipality with such an order in the Dakotas outside of Native American reservations, which have generally been more vigilant in adopting coronavirus precautions. Native Americans have disproportionately died from COVID-19, accounting for 24% of deaths statewide.

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem have resisted mask requirements. Burgum promotes personal choice but tried to encourage masks with a social media campaign. Noem has discouraged mask requirements, saying she doubts a broad consensus in the medical community that they help prevent infections.

At a press briefing, Burgum displayed a slide that showed active cases in neighboring Minnesota rising to record levels since implementing a mask mandate July 25.

"In the end, it’s about individual decisions, not what the government does," he said.

Noem, who has yet to appear at a public event with a mask, carved out a reputation as a staunch conservative when she defied calls early in the pandemic for lockdown orders.

But both governors face increasing pressure to step up their approach.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, infectious disease chief at the National Institutes of Health, told MSNBC that the states' virus levels were “disturbing,” especially as fall weather arrives and Americans begin spending more time indoors.

"You don’t want to start off already with a baseline that’s so high,” Fauci said.

Neither governor appears ready to yield any ground.

“We will not be changing that approach,” Noem spokesman Ian Fury said Thursday, citing a low hospitalization rate and the fact that only 3% of intensive-care beds are occupied by COVID patients.

Doctors in both states warn that their health care systems remain vulnerable. Small hospitals in rural areas depend on just a handful of large hospitals to handle large inflows of patients or complex procedures, said Dr. Misty Anderson, president of the North Dakota Medical Association.

Aaker, the president of the South Dakota physician's group, said medical practices have seen patients delaying routine care during the pandemic, meaning that doctors could soon see an uptick in patients needing more serious attention.

“Now we are adding a surge in coronavirus cases potentially,” he said. "They are worried about being overwhelmed.”

———


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About 8,800 unaccompanied children are expelled at US border

About 8,800 unaccompanied children have been quickly expelled from the United States along the Mexico border under a pandemic-related measure that effectively ended asylum

By
The Associated Press
11 September 2020, 21:29
2 min read

SAN FRANCISCO -- About 8,800 unaccompanied children have been quickly expelled from the United States along the Mexico border under a pandemic-related measure that effectively ended asylum, authorities said Friday.

The Trump administration has expelled more than 159,000 people since the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention emergency order took effect in March, a figure that also includes more than 7,600 adults and children who crossed the border in families.

The figures on children were reported for the first time in a declaration by Raul Ortiz, the Border Patrol's deputy chief, as part of the administration's appeal of an order to stop housing children in hotels.

The administration “immediately” expelled most children and families to Mexico but more than 2,200 unaccompanied children and 600 people who came in families were held until flights could be arranged to return home, Ortiz said.

The administration asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a ruling last week that found use of hotels skirted “fundamental humanitarian protections.”

U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles ruled that using hotels for long-term detention violated a two-decade-old settlement governing treatment of children in custody. She ordered border agencies to stop placing children in hotels by Tuesday.

Justice Department attorneys argued that settlement doesn't apply during the public health emergency and that hotels were appropriate.

“While in these hotels, the government provides minors with supervision by specialists, recreation, amenities, and protective measures against COVID-19,” the attorneys wrote.

Before the pandemic, unaccompanied children were sent to state-licensed shelters operated by the Department of Health and Human Services and often released to family members while seeking asylum.

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FROM THE RIGHT
Woodward Revelations Hurting Trump
A new poll shows meaningful shifts in public attitudes.

JAMES JOYNER · SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2020 · 21 COMMENTS














Yahoo News has a new poll out with a feel-good story: Trump is falling further behind. Let’s hold our horses a bit before celebrating.

“New Yahoo News/YouGov poll: Trump falls 10 points behind Biden amid reports he misled Americans about COVID-19 and disparaged U.S. soldiers.”

Donald Trump has fallen further behind Joe Biden following bombshell reports that the president knowingly misled Americans about the dangers of COVID-19 and privately disparaged dead U.S. soldiers as “suckers” and “losers,” according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll.

The survey, which was conducted from Sept. 9 to 11, shows Biden leading Trump by 10 percentage points among registered voters, 49 percent to 39 percent. The previous Yahoo News/YouGov poll found Biden ahead by just 6 points immediately after the Republican National Convention.

The results suggest that a week of unrelenting and unflattering revelations about Trump — from the Atlantic report on his alleged contempt for Americans wounded or killed in war (which appeared on Sept. 3) to Bob Woodward’s recordings of Trump admitting he downplayed the deadliness of COVID-19 (released on Sept. 9) — has damaged the president’s standing with voters.

My initial reaction was that the analyst was taking a change in a single poll within the range of sampling error and explaining it based on what had happened in the news since. But, no, they actually polled on those items.

Asked if their opinion of Trump’s coronavirus response has changed because of Woodward’s big scoop — a tape of Trump privately acknowledging the virus was “deadly stuff” even as he publicly sought, in his own words, “to play it down”— nearly a quarter of Americans (23 percent) say yes. Even 15 percent of those who voted for Trump in 2016 say the Woodward news has changed their mind about the president’s handling of the pandemic.

Those might seem like small numbers. But in an age of extreme polarization, they could augur a real shift. Overall, 15 percent of Americans say the Woodward quotes have made them less likely to vote to reelect the president in November — and a third of these were 2016 Trump supporters.

The military story seems to have had a similar impact. Asked which candidate shows more respect for the military, 50 percent of registered voters name Biden, compared to 39 percent for Trump. By the same margin, voters say Biden would do a better job leading the military than the current commander in chief.

Reactions to Trump’s reported remarks on the military were predictably partisan, but nearly a quarter of independents (23 percent) say the news increased their support for Biden, compared to just 9 percent who say the news increased their support for Trump. Six percent of 2016 Trump supporters say they have moved toward Biden as a result.

Again, I’m naturally skeptical of this simply because it didn’t change my opinion of Trump. But, of course, I’m almost certainly in the top 1 percent in interest in political news and my views are much more firmly rooted than normal citizens who pay rather scant attention.

This is a much more telling bit of information:

This reflects a larger problem for Trump. Only 1 percent of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 supporters say they will vote for the president in November. At the same time, 8 percent of Trump’s 2016 supporters say they will vote for Biden.

There were a lot of people who voted for Trump who had never voted for a Republican simply because they were tired of “politics as usual” and thought he would “reboot the system.” One presumes he’s lost most of those people.

More detail from the poll:

Registered voters reject Trump — and prefer Biden — on nearly every major issue. For instance, a wide majority of them (57 percent) disapprove of the president’s handling of the pandemic; only 40 percent approve. By a 17-point margin (48 percent yes to 31 percent no) voters say the current coronavirus situation in the U.S. would be better right now if Biden had been president instead of Trump.

Likewise, only 37 percent of registered voters approve of the way the president has handled the Black Lives Matter protests; 54 percent disapprove. In the wake of the protests in Kenosha, Wis., an even larger majority of registered voters (57 percent) say Trump “makes things worse” when he talks about race. Just 27 percent say he “makes things better.” By a 15-point margin, voters believe that Biden (49 percent) would have handled the Black Lives Matter protests better than Trump (34 percent).

Looking forward, a 10-point plurality thinks that if Biden is elected, there will be less violence of the sort seen in Kenosha (42 percent) rather than more (32 percent). Half as many voters believe Biden wants to “abolish the suburbs” (23 percent) — a frequent Trump attack — than believe he wants to do no such thing (46 percent). And a full 61 percent predict there will be more violence if Trump is reelected, while just 20 percent say there will be less.

Those are really good numbers. The thing is, we don’t know how they’re distributed or how salient they are for voters.

As we’ve beaten to death here over the years—and regular readers, who are also off the charts in interest in these things or they wouldn’t be, well, regular readers instinctively understand—we don’t elect Presidents on a national popular vote but in 51 statewide contests. It’s quite possible these attitudes aren’t the same in the “swing” states.

Additionally, there are almost certainly a significant number of traditional Republican voters who think Trump is a lying scumbag who has totally mismanaged the pandemic but will nonetheless vote for him because they can smell the opportunity to take over the Supreme Court and overturn Roe v. Wade.

As always, aggregates of polls are better than individual ones and they, too, are good news for Biden. The slightly Republican-leaning RealClearPolitics average also shows Biden’s lead widening—although not as wide as it once was.

While 7.5 points isn’t 10, it’s still significant. Moreover, the fact that Trump hasn’t tied, much less led, the race for even a single day going back more than a year is telling.

The FiveThirtyEight gang uses a more rigorous methodology in choosing and weighting polls but paint a remarkably similar picture:

Even with that, though, they give Biden only a 75 percent chance of winning 270 Electoral votes, compared to Trump’s 24 (there’s a 1 percent chance of a 269-269 tie). Mostly, though, that’s because the state polls are fewer and thus less reliable. Plus, they’re overcorrecting for the perception they got it wrong in 2016 and being extra cautious.


About James JoynerJames Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College and a nonresident senior fellow at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm vet. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

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Roger Stone to Donald Trump: bring in martial law if you lose election



THAT WAS THE PLAN ALL ALONG FROM BANNON'S ADMIRATION OF LENIN'S BOLSHEVIK COUP TO STONE'S NIXONIAN FANTASY OF COPS IN THE STREETS


Trump meanwhile promises to ‘put down’ leftwing protests and says US Marshals killing Portland suspect was ‘retribution’  ASSASSINATION IS A BETTER WORD

Roger Stone in 2019. The long-time Trump ally has said the president should refuse to give up power should he lose November’s election. Photograph: Sam Corum/EPA

Roger Stone, whose 40-month prison sentence for lying to Congress and witness tampering in the Russia investigation was commuted by Donald Trump, has said Trump should seize total power and jail prominent figures including Bill and Hillary Clinton and Mark Zuckerberg if he loses to Joe Biden in November.

The long-time Republican strategist and dirty trickster, who has a tattoo of Richard Nixon on his back, lied about contacts with WikiLeaks during the 2016 election regarding emails hacked from Democratic party accounts.

In turn, special counsel Robert Mueller and the Senate intelligence committee suspected Trump lied when he said he could not recall discussing the leaks with Stone.

Stone did not turn on Trump and had his sentence reduced on the recommendation of attorney general William Barr. But he still faced prison before Trump acted. His conviction stands.

Both men were in Nevada on Saturday, Trump holding campaign events while Stone sought to raise money for himself. He outlined his advice to Trump should he lose in a call to conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s Infowars online show, on Thursday.

Citing widely debunked claims of fraud around early voting, absentee balloting and voting by mail, Stone said Trump should consider invoking the Insurrection Act and arresting the Clintons, former Senate majority leader Harry Reid, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Tim Cook of Apple and “anybody else who can be proven to be involved in illegal activity”.

Stone also said: “The ballots in Nevada on election night should be seized by federal marshals and taken from the state. They are completely corrupted. No votes should be counted from the state of Nevada if that turns out to be the provable case. Send federal marshals to the Clark county board of elections, Mr President!”

Nevada has not gone to a Republican since 2004 but is shaping up to be a crucial contest this year. Biden leads there, but polls have tightened.

Trump’s own rhetoric was not far removed from that of the man he spared prison. The president continued on Saturday to make unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud. He and his campaign have also consistently claimed without evidence that “antifa”, or anti-fascist, activists represent a deadly threat to suburban voters that will be unleashed should Biden win.

Commenting on a Daily Beast report about leftwing activist groups planning what to do “if the election ends without a clear outcome or with a Biden win that Trump refuses to recognize”, Stone told Jones the website should be shut down.

“If the Daily Beast is involved in provably seditious and illegal activities,” he said, “their entire staff can be taken into custody and their office can be shut down. They wanna play war, this is war.”

Stone also advocated “forming an election day operation using the FBI, federal marshals and Republican state officials across the country to be prepared to file legal objections [to results] and if necessary to physically stand in the way of criminal activity”.

In an interview broadcast on Saturday night, Trump told Fox News he would happily “put down” any leftwing protests.

“We’ll put them down very quickly if they do that,” he told Jeannine Pirro.

“We have the right to do that. We have the power to do that if we want. Look, it’s called insurrection. We just send in and we, we do it very easy. I mean, it’s very easy. I’d rather not do that, because there’s no reason for it, but if we had to, we’d do that and put it down within minutes, within minutes.”

The Insurrection Act of 1807 allows the president to use federal troops to enforce federal law. Last used in 1992, it was much discussed this summer, amid protests over racism and police brutality arising from the killing of George Floyd by officers in Minneapolis.

Ultimately Trump chose simply to send federal agents to confront protesters, most prominently in Portland, Oregon, a move which proved hugely controversial.

In his interview with Fox News, Trump discussed an incident in the city in which US Marshals shot dead a suspect in the killing of a member of a rightwing group.

“There has to be retribution when you have crime like this,” Trump said.

He also said protests such as those in Portland would lead to “a backlash” from the political right, “the likes of which you haven’t seen in many, many years”.

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Is the 'Mozart Effect' real? New analysis indicates that music can help epilepsy

by European College of Neuropsychopharmacology
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

A new comprehensive analysis on the effect of Mozart's music on epilepsy has confirmed that listening to his piano music can reduce the frequency of epilepsy attacks. The results of this comprehensive meta-analysis (a study of studies), which may overturn current skepticism about the effect, are presented at the ECNP congress after recent publication in a peer-reviewed journal.


The idea that listening to Mozart may have beneficial effects on mental health arose from early findings in the 1990s. There have been several studies since, but many involved small numbers of people, or have been of variable quality, leading to mixed evidence overall. This has meant that the 'Mozart Effect' has been treated with some skepticism by many clinicians. Now two Italian Researchers, Dr. Gianluca Sesso and Dr. Federico Sicca from the University of Pisa have conducted a systematic review of works related to the effect of Mozart's music on epilepsy.

Working according to accepted standard methods for analyzing clinical treatment, they looked at 147 published research articles, which they then evaluated according to such things are relevance and quality of the research. This allowed them to select 12 pieces of research which they gathered into 9 separate groups, representing the best available science on the effect of Mozart's music on epilepsy.

They found that listening to Mozart, especially on a daily basis, led to a significant reduction in epileptic seizures, and also to a reduced frequency of abnormal brain activities in epileptic patients (called interictal epileptiform discharges, which are commonly seen in epileptic patients). These effects occurred after a single listening session and were maintained after a prolonged period of treatment.

Gianluca Sesso said "This isn't the first such review of the effect of Mozart's music on epilepsy, but there has been a flow of new research in the last few years, so it was time to stand back and look at the overall picture. The design of the studies varies, for example some people look at a single listening session, others at daily listening sessions, so it's not easy to form a conclusion.

Epilepsy is surprisingly common, affecting just under 1 person in a hundred worldwide. This means that it has significant social and personal costs. Mostly it's treated by drugs, but these drugs don't work in around 30% of patients, so we need to be open to other therapies: the important thing is that these therapies can be tested and shown to work, and this is what we have shown here".

The meta-analysis indicates that a period of listening to Mozart can give an average reduction in epileptic seizures ranging from between 31% to 66%, but this varies from person to person and according to the music stimulus used. The original studies on the Mozart Effect used the sonata for 2 pianos, K448, and this has remained the music most used in studies. The K545 piano sonata has also been shown to have an effect.

Dr. Sesso said, "All cultures have music, so it obviously fulfills some psychological need. The mechanisms of the Mozart Effect are poorly understood. Obviously other music may have similar effects, but it may be that Mozart's sonatas have distinctive rhythmic structures which are particularly suited to working on epilepsy. This may involve several brain systems, but this would need to be proven.

This is a review of research, and not original research. One thing it shows is that we need more consistent studies into the effect of music on the mind"

Commenting, Dr. Vesta Steibliene, Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, and member of the ECNP Abstract and Poster Committee commented, "There is growing interest in non-invasive brain stimulation techniques in the treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders. This review revealed that Mozart music could be an effective non-invasive method of neurostimulation, reducing the frequency of epileptic seizures, even in hard to treat patients. However, in order to use this method in clinical settings, the exact mechanism of the Mozart music effect on the brain regions should be better understood".

Dr. Steibliene was not involved in this work.


Explore further  
More information: Here are links to excerpts from the Mozart piano sonatas mentioned in the article:

K448 for 2 pianos, (pianists Murray Perahia and Radu Lupu) open.spotify.com/embed/album/0 … fMutJIKcohWLEZ3UhAux

K545 sonata (pianist, Lang Lang) open.spotify.com/embed/album/2 … 6Cg49cL6PtyDODubUzGY


Conference Abstract: Safe and sound: meta-analysing the Mozart effect on epilepsy


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Volcanic ash may have a bigger impact on the climate than we thought

by University of Colorado at Boulder


A plume of ash and dust rises from Pavlof Volcano on the Alaskan Peninsula in 2013. Credit: NASA

When volcanos erupt, these geologic monsters produce tremendous clouds of ash and dust—plumes that can blacken the sky, shut down air traffic and reach heights of roughly 25 miles above Earth's surface.

A new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder suggests that such  may also have a larger influence on the planet's climate than scientists previously suspected.

The new research, published in the journal Nature Communications, examines the  of Mount Kelut (or Kelud) on the Indonesian island of Java in 2014. Drawing on real-world observations of this event and advanced computer simulations, the team discovered that volcanic ash seems to be prone to loitering—remaining in the air for months or even longer after a .

"What we found for this eruption is that the volcanic ash can persist for a long time," said Yunqian Zhu, lead author of the new study and a research scientist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at CU Boulder.

Lingering ash

The discovery began with a chance observation: Members of the research team had been flying an  near the site of the Mount Kelut eruption—an event that covered large portions of Java in ash and drove people from their homes. In the process, the aircraft spotted something that shouldn't have been there.

"They saw some large particles floating around in the atmosphere a month after the eruption," Zhu said. "It looked like ash."


Ash covers rooftops in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, in the wake of the 2014 eruption of Mount Kelut Credit: CC photo via Wikimedia Commons

She explained that scientists have long known that volcanic eruptions can take a toll on the planet's climate. These events blast huge amounts of sulfur-rich particles high into Earth's atmosphere where they can block sunlight from reaching the ground.

Researchers haven't thought, however, that ash could play much of a role in that cooling effect. These chunks of rocky debris, scientists reasoned, are so heavy that most of them likely fall out of volcanic clouds not long after an eruption.

Zhu's team wanted to find out why that wasn't the case with Kelut. Drawing on aircraft and satellite observations of the unfolding disaster, the group discovered that the volcano's plume seemed to be rife with small and lightweight particles of ash—tiny particles that were likely capable of floating in the air for long periods of time, much like dandelion fluff.

"Researchers have assumed that ash is similar to volcanic glass," Zhu said. "But what we've found is that these floating ones have a density that's more like pumice."

Disappearing molecules

Study coauthor Brian Toon added that these pumice-like particles also seem to shift the chemistry of the entire volcanic plume.

Toon, a professor in LASP and the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at CU Boulder, explained that erupting volcanos spew out a large amount of sulfur dioxide. Many researchers previously assumed that those molecules interact with others in the air and convert into sulfuric acid—a series of chemical reactions that, theoretically, could take weeks to complete. Observations of real-life eruptions, however, suggest that it happens a lot faster than that.


NASA's unmanned Global Hawk aircraft, which observed ash lingering in the air after the eruption. Credit: NASA/Dryden/Carla Thomas

"There has been a puzzle of why these reactions occur so fast," Toon said.

He and his colleagues think they've discovered the answer: Those molecules of sulfur dioxide seem to stick to the particles of ash floating in the air. In the process, they may undergo chemical reactions on the surface of the ash itself—potentially pulling around 43% more sulfur dioxide out of the air.

Ash, in other words, may hasten the transformation of volcanic gasses in the atmosphere.

Just what the impact of those clouds of ash are on the climate isn't clear. Long-lasting particles in the atmosphere could, theoretically, darken and even help to cool the planet after an eruption. Floating ash might also blow all the way from sites like Kelut to the planet's poles. There, it could kickstart chemical reactions that would damage Earth's all-important ozone layer.

But the researchers say that one thing is clear: When a volcano blows, it may be time to pay a lot more attention to all that ash and its true impact on Earth's climate.

"I think we've discovered something important here," Toon said. "It's subtle, but it could make a big difference."

Volcanic emissions can cause changes in the atmosphere over a long time
More information: Yunqian Zhu et al. Persisting volcanic ash particles impact stratospheric SO2 lifetime and aerosol optical properties, Nature Communications (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-18352-5
Journal information: Nature Communications 

Provided by University of Colorado at Boulder
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