Volcanoes Could Usher In New ‘Cold Period” Say Scientists

A new study has indicated that emissions from volcanoes have slowed the warming of the planet during the last 13 years. Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder have been looking at why the Earth has not warmed as much as climate experts predicted. The answer is that hundreds of volcanoes have been spewing sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere.

The paper has been  published in Geophysical Research letters. The research takes some of the emphasis off China and India who were blamed for the excessive amounts of aerosols they were putting into the atmosphere.Ryan Neely, lead author of the study said:

“This paper addresses a question of immediate relevance to our understanding of the human impact on climate, It should interest those examining the sources of decadal climate variability, the global impact of local pollution and the role of volcanoes.”

Small and moderate volcanic eruptions mask the climate data slightly but large eruptions can have a much more devastating effect. The Tambora eruption in 1815 lead to ‘the year without a summer’ where hundreds of thousands were killed by the effects of famine brought on by cold weather during the growing season.

Volcanic activity has increased massively over the last couple of years and currently shows no sign of abating. This study suggests that continued activity will continue not only to mask global warming, but could actually cause the planet to cool quite markedly. The Tambora eruption caused a 3degree drop in temperature around the globe. With volcanoes in Italy, Kamchatka, Iceland and Indonesia currently blowing their noxious gasses into the air we need to seriously consider the possibility of the Earth cooling to the point where agriculture will be affected.

Should this be the case, as it has been in the past, far more lives are at risk than at any previous time. there were a tens of millions less people to feed when Tambora blew its top.

The infrastructure that we now rely on did not exist then. An eruption on the scale of Tambora, should it occur now, would be a disaster incomparable that has anything that has so far befallen modern man.

The report does not discuss super volcanoes such as Yellowstone. These volcanoes have magma chambers capable of spewing up to a cubic mile of magma from multiple vents. Such an explosion is considered by scientists to be an extinction level event.

Fortunately they don’t happen often, every few hundred thousand years but modern technology hopefully means that we would have enough warning to take appropriate action that may allow some of mankind to survive.