Massive volcanic events in Earth’s history that released large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere frequently correlate with periods of severe environmental change and mass extinctions.
Massive volcanic events in Earth’s history that released large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere frequently correlate with periods of severe environmental change and mass extinctions. A new method to estimate how much and how rapidly carbon was released by the volcanoes could improve our understanding of the climate response, according to an international team led by researchers from Penn State and the University of Oxford.
The researchers, which included Dr Joost Frieling, Professor Tamsin Mather and Professor Hugh Jenkyns of Oxford Earth Sciences, reported this week in the journal Nature Geosciences that they have developed a new technique to estimate excess mercury left behind in the rock record due to ancient volcanic activity. The technique can estimate carbon emissions from large igneous provinces (LIPs), volcanic events that can last millions of years and produce magma that reaches Earth’s surface and forms lava flows hundreds of miles long.
“Large igneous provinces are often used as an analog for human-caused climate change because they occur relatively rapidly geologically and release a lot of carbon dioxide,” said Isabel Fendley, assistant research professor of geosciences at Penn State and lead author of the study. “But one big challenge we address with this study is that to date, it has been really difficult to figure out exactly how much carbon was released by these volcanoes.”
Read more at University of Oxford
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