A new climate simulation by NASA suggests that excessively massive volcanic eruptions, also known as "flood basalt eruptions," could substantially warm the climate of Earth and destroy the ozone layer that protects life from the ultraviolet radiation of the Sun.
According to a SciTechDaily report, the findings oppose previous research that found these volcanoes were cooling the climate. Such a simulation suggests that vast flood basalt eruptions on Mars and Venus may have contributed to the warming of their climates.
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More so, they may have doomed the long-term habitability of these worlds as well, of these world by being contributors to water loss,
Unlike brief, explosive volcanic eruptions like Pinatubo or the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai that occurred over hours or days, flood basalts are areas with a series of eruptive episodes lasting, probably hundreds of years each, and taking place over periods of hundreds of thousands of years, sometimes even longer.
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The mountains on the Geikie Peninsula in Greenland consist mostly of flood basalts formed during the opening of the North Atlantic Ocean millions of years ago.
A Brief Cooling Period Overwhelmed by Warming Effect Discovered
A similar Phys.org report specified that some occurred at roughly the same time as mass-extinction occurrences, and many are linked to extremely warm periods in the history of Earth.
They seem to have been common on other terrestrial worlds in the solar system like Venus and Mars.
According to Scott Guzewich from the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, NASA expects intense cooing in their simulations.
Nonetheless, he added, they discovered that a brief cooling period was "overwhelmed by a warming effect." Zuzewich is the lead author of a paper about this research published in the Geophysical Research Letters journal.
Ozone Loss
Whereas the ozone loss was no longer a surprise, the simulations specified the potential magnitude of the destruction, roughly two-thirds reduction over global average values, approximately equivalent to the entire planet having an ozone thinning compared to a severe Antarctic ozone hole, explained Guzewich.
The study author employed the Goddard Earth Observing System Chemistry-Climate Model to simulate a four-year-long phase of the CRB or Columbia River Basalt eruption that took place from 15 to 17 million years ago in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.
This model computed the impacts of the eruption on the troposphere, the atmosphere's turbulent lowest layer with most of the weather and water vapor, and the stratosphere, the atmosphere's next layer that's mostly calm and dry.
CRB eruptions were possibly a mix of explosive occurrences that sent material high "into the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere, around eight to 10.6 miles, or 13 to 17 kilometers altitude, and effusive eruptions that did not expand beyond 1.9 miles, roughly three kilometers altitude.
New Simulation Model
This new simulation is the most extensive yet developed for flood basalt eruptions and incorporates the impacts of atmospheric chemistry and climate dynamics on each other, showing an essential feedback mechanism that prior simulations missed.
Eruptions such as the one the researchers simulated would emit large amounts of sulfur dioxide gas explained Guzewich. Chemistry in the atmosphere swiftly converts these gas molecules to solid sulfate aerosols.
Such aerosols mirror visible sunlight, cousin the initial cooling impact, but absorb infrared radiation, which warms the atmosphere aloft in the upper troposphere and the lower stratosphere.
Warming this area of the atmosphere enables water vapor, typically confined close to the surface, to get mixed into the stratosphere, which is typically excessively dry.
Related information about flood basalt eruptions is shown on Facts in Motin's YouTube video below:
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