Miss Helen Innes

Research Fellow in Volcanology

Researcher profile

Email

hi7@st-andrews.ac.uk

 

Research areas

My research contributes to our understanding of past volcanic activity, focussing especially on climatic impact of explosive eruptions from the last 100,000 years. These large volcanic events can cause decadal-long climate perturbations through injection of sulfate aerosols to the stratosphere. This in turn can have disastrous environmental and societal consequences.

My PhD project uses well resolved polar ice core samples which preserve aerosol and ash (tephra) evidence of past eruptions.  I am combining high resolution sulfur isotope analysis of deposited volcanic aerosols with tephra geochemical analysis to better interpret volcanic source, plume height, and stratospheric SO₂ injection of explosive volcanism recorded in the ice core record. Fingerprinting previously unknown eruptions in this way is essential to aid our evaluation of the climate forcing associated with explosive volcanic events and the frequency at which they occur.

Selected publications

• Open access

  Frequency of large volcanic eruptions over the past 200 000 years

  Wolff, E., Burke, A., Crick, L., Doyle, E. A., Innes, H., Mahony, S. H., Rae, J. W. B., Severi, M. & Sparks, R. S. J., 6 Jan 2023, In: Climate of the Past. 19, p. 23–33 11 p.

  Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

• Open access

  High sensitivity of summer temperatures to stratospheric sulfur loading from volcanoes in the Northern Hemisphere

  Burke, A., Crick, L., Anchukaitis, K. J., Innes, H., Byrne, M. P., Hutchison, W., McConnell, J. R., Moore, K. A., Rae, J. W. B., Sigl, M. & Wilson, R., 21 Nov 2023, In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 120, 47, 8 p., e2221810120.

  Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

• Open access

  Geochemical ice-core constraints on the timing and climatic impact of Aniakchak II (1628 BCE) and Thera (Minoan) volcanic eruptions

  Pearson, C., Sigl, M., Burke, A., Davies, S., Kurbatov, A., Severi, M., Cole-Dai, J., Innes, H., Albert, P. G. & Helmick, M., May 2022, In: PNAS Nexus. 1, 2, 12 p., pgac048.

  Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

• Open access

  Extreme climate after massive eruption of Alaska's Okmok volcano in 43 BCE and effects on the late Roman Republic and Ptolemaic Kingdom

  McConnell, J. R., Sigl, M., Plunkett, G., Burke, A., Kim, W. M., Raible, C. C., Wilson, A. I., Manning, J. G., Ludlow, F., Chellman, N. J., Innes, H. M., Yang, Z., Larsen, J. F., Schaefer, J. R., Kipfstuhl, S., Mojtabavi, S., Wilhelms, F., Opel, T., Meyer, H. & Steffensen, J. P., 22 Jun 2020, (E-pub ahead of print) In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Latest Articles, 2002722117.

  Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

 

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