nice read shorty, thanks.....regarding the mass budgets of CO2 and other “global warming” gasses, i never brought up volcanoes in my earlier posts about the natural causes and affects on earth's meteorological condition for a couple reasons. but here are some things to consider.
much like solar spot activity, volcanic activity on earth is cyclical. unlike with solar spot activity though, i do have an understanding of where we are in time with regard to major volcanic eruptions. those that have been witnessed in recorded history are largely trivial, yet they still clearly affect earth’s atmosphere. the study of ancient tuff deposits (volcanic ash) around the world reveals the existence of volcanic systems and associated past eruptions of nearly unimaginable magnitude. as an example, Mt. St. Helens produced about ~0.75 cubic kilometers of material during the initial blast in 1980 (a kilometer is about 6/10 of a mile, so think of about a half a cubic mile of material). compare this to the Long Valley Caldera eruption of 600,000 years ago on the east side of the Sierras which produced over 600 cubic kilometers of material in ONE eruption, the ash deposits of which can be found in Pennsylvania. or the Yellowstone eruptions (two calderas) that combined for well over 1,000 cubic kilometers of erupted material. or the Valles Caldera in New Mexico which was in between the size of Long Valley and the combined Yellowstone eruptions (the Valles formed the Bandelier Tuff….you guys may know Bandelier monument near Los Alamos). Tambora, referenced in shorty’s article, is also another one of these super volcanic systems still very active today. In fact, once these large systems were discovered (back in the late 50’s and early 60’s), they have been found all over the world, but there has not been a “super eruption” for 100s of thousands of years, and it may be several 100’s of thousands of years before the next one.
Just try to imagine the magnitude of change that would occur after one of these eruptions……i.e. no more bread basket in the Midwest fellas and world wide climates severely altered for decades. One of my points is that even with these types of eruptions the largest budget of CO2 still remains in the oceans……historic evidence of the vast storage of the CO2 is observed in the huge thicknessess of (now) continental limestone deposits, like those in Nevada, Utah, Colorado etc. The corollary point here is that the small scale warming and cooling events described over the last 200 years are a) trivial with regard to those in the past b) easily brought about by small scale volcanic activity, c) likely affected or even caused by outside influences such as cyclical changes in solar spot activity, and d) largely controlled by changes in the ocean temps which control the largest mass of CO2 on earth……a warming ocean releases more CO2, a cooling ocean holds more back…….well that was fun……sorry…..i’ll go away now.
edited post..wait, sunny, and 70 degrees in el dorado, cold front and rain expected by sunday evening, otherwise spring weather on hand.
