Deadliest Eruption

#throwbackthurday... The following are the famous five extinctions - Ordovician Silurian mass extinction, Late Devonian mass extinction, Permian mass extinction, Traissic - Jurassic mass extinction and Cretaceous - Tertiary mass extinction. The last three of them are closely related to flood basalt eruptions… 

One of the episodes (Season 2, episode 11) from How the Earth Was Made, “Earth's Deadliest Eruption”, gave a clear picture of how a flood basalt eruption can be extremely "deadly".  This "dramatic chapter" of earth caused by the volcanic eruption in Siberia nearly had everything on the planet wiped out. Without too many technical terms, the episode described some findings from the research of the geology at Siberia Traps (It took them 7 days just to get there!). The eruption in Siberia happened 250 million years ago, and lasted for a million years. Yes, a million years. Never have I imagined that a volcanic eruption could last over a month, never mind a million years. Without doubt, it has been the largest lava flow on land in history. What is noteworthy is that carbon dioxide released from magma was another significant cause of extinction, as it raised global temperature by a total of 5 degrees. The warming effect also led to oxygen shortage and disruption of sea currents, as water stopped flowing between the Pole and the Equator. Then, marine life became part of the Permian-Triassic extinction.

Further on the effect of carbon dioxide, Whiteside et. al., 2010 confirmed the catastrophic effect of CO2 on marine and continental extinctions. This links to our current state of affairs on earth..
Facts show that high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are harmful to the earth as a whole. Alarminly, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been increasing exponentially.
If the rise of emission of carbon dioxide continues, it is likely that temperatures would consequently rise. Would this pave the way to the next extinction?

Back to volcanic eruptions. Based on the information of another basalt, Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii, which is currently forming, because it is 500,000 times smaller in scale than that of Siberia Traps, it is unlikely to be the main threats behind the "Sixth Extinction". Yet, studies about the indirect impacts of volcanic eruption definitely alert us about the hazards of rising carbon emission..

Till next time x