Right on all counts, FK.
Sulfur dioxide -> sulfurous acid -> sulfuric acid gets most of the attention but HF hydrofluoric acid is also being produced in quantity, as is some HNO3 nitric acid. Despite this all shortly ending up in the sea, I don't imagine it will contribute quantitatively to ongoing ocean acidification from soaring carbon dioxide.
After reading up on Iceland's devastating Laki eruption of 1783, the Great London Smog of 1952 (and 1962), and acid rain n the US (Ohio coal plants to Adirondack lakes), I was surprised to see plants have come back at the Laki central fissure (image below). Admittedly it is 231 years later on a rainy site.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakihttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smoghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rainWe've previously discussed attribution of previous volcanic eruptions to the Greenland ice core record, usually from isotope ratios in combination with historical accounts. This event will not result in substantial deposition in Greenland relative to background as things are going.
Meanwhile, down in Antarctica, a 6 July 14 paper in Nature Climate Change reported sulfate concentrations in 26 ice cores from 19 different locations for last 2,000 years. Those eruptions with a global distribution synchronize with independently dated sulfate peaks in Greenland ice cores.
They identified 116 volcanic eruptions over this time frame including Tambora in 1815, Kuwae in 1458 and Samalas in 1257. The 13th century events may have triggered the epic drought in the American Southwest; the Little Ice Age is also commonly attributed to these sulfate aerosols.
Not all eruptions had counterparts in Greenland's ice cores but that is being re-visited on firn cores with Reno's continuous flow melt apparatus. These global injections of SO2 into the stratosphere -- and attendant planet-scale cooling -- come from tropical volcanoes rather than those at high latitudes.
The key experimental point here is that measurement at 19 core locations provides a whole lot better quantitative picture than one location (eg Epica dome). Here it turned out that Kuwae and Samalas deposited a third less sulfate in Antarctica than previously estimated, implying a weaker cooling effect on global climate than previously thought, with implications for tuning climate sensitivity models.
The list below gives the top 10 sulfate deposition events found in the ice cores. Note the immense Laki eruption is only 8th largest, meaning the current non-stratospheric eruption is not noteworthy even on this sub-Holocene time scale.
Even the top 10 may not be that special given 116 x 10 = ~1160 major sulfate injections since the Last Glacial Maximum or scaling to post-Eemian events, 1160 x 6 = ~6960, very few of which could have account for Greenland interior ice radar horizons as these only number ~100.
7 Ilopango, Central America – 450
4 Rabaul Caldera, New Guinea – 531
5 Rabaul Caldera, New Guinea – 566
3 Mount Churchill, Alaska – 674
9 Mount Rinjani, Indonesia – 1200 and 1250
0 Samalas, Indonesia – 1257
6 Quilotoa, Andes – 1280
1 Kuwae, Vanuatu – 1458
8 Laki, Iceland – 1785
2 Tambora, Indonesia – 1815