Members of a rescue team walk among debris in Glagaharjo village, which has been hit by Mount Merapi eruptions, to search for more victims, in the Sleman district of Indonesia's central Java province November 8, 2010. REUTERS/Sigit Pamungkas

The eruption of Mount Merapi in Indonesia is not big enough to stop climate change temporarily, as Mount Pinatubo did, but it may contribute to changing rainfall patterns in Asia.

Unfortunately southeast Asia, already suffering from flooding and torrential downpours, will probably see more of that in the months to come.

“The largest volcanic eruptions that took place on our planet most likely caused an important shift to appear in worldwide rain patterns, in the sense that certain areas got drenched more, whereas others were subjected to floods and excessive rain.

New data show that the phenomenon is a lot more widespread than originally thought, which means that the rain pattern disturbances affect a lot more regions on Earth than researchers first estimated.

The new work was carried out by researchers based at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, which is located at the Columbia University, in Ithaca, New York.

Tree ring analysis experts there looked at the traces that about 54 large eruptions left in the rings of trees over the past 800 years, and determined that central Asia usually dries out following an eruption.  On the other hand, regions in southeast Asia, such as for example Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, get more precipitations than usual. These findings are the exact opposite of the ones made with climate computer models.

After analyzing tree ring data, the scientists determined that active volcanoes have been contributing to the surprising increased rainfall.

Read more here.