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How did volcanism trigger climate change before the eruptions started?
news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Sunday, 8 September - 11:00 · 1 minute
As our climate warms beyond its historical range , scientists increasingly need to study climates deeper in the planet’s past to get information about our future . One object of study is a warming event known as the Miocene Climate Optimum (MCO) from about 17 to 15 million years ago. It coincided with floods of basalt lava that covered a large area of the Northwestern US, creating what are called the “Columbia River Basalts.” This timing suggests that volcanic CO 2 was the cause of the warming.
Those eruptions were the most recent example of a “Large Igneous Province,” a phenomenon that has repeatedly triggered climate upheavals and mass extinctions throughout Earth’s past. The Miocene version was relatively benign; it saw CO 2 levels and global temperatures rise, causing ecosystem changes and significant melting of Antarctic ice, but didn’t trigger a mass extinction.
A paper just published in Geology , led by Jennifer Kasbohm of the Carnegie Science’s Earth and Planets Laboratory, upends the idea that the eruptions triggered the warming while still blaming them for the peak climate warmth.