How much CO2 does a single volcano emit? (Synopsis) [Starts With A Bang]

“One volcano puts out more toxic gases – one volcano – than man makes in a whole year. And when you look at this ‘climate change,’ and when you look at the regular climate change that we all have in the world, we have warm and we have cooling spells.” -John Raese

Every year, dozens of volcanoes actively erupt across the Earth’s surface. In addition, other active volcanoes continue to release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and even dormant volcanoes and other fissures in the Earth contribute to our overall carbon dioxide content. If we want to understand the effects that humanity is having on our atmosphere, we need to understand the natural contribution first.

The atmosphere of the Earth, although only 5.15 x 10^18 kilograms in mass (just under 0.0001% of the Earth’s mass), plays a tremendous role in defining the properties of our surface. Image credit: Cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin / Russian Space Agency Press Services.

Tremendous advances in measuring these natural contributions have occurred since the 1990s, as we’ve now quantified to a much-improved precision the effects of these natural components. Volcanoes of all types, on average, emit somewhere in the ballpark of 645 million tons of CO2 per year, with occasional large eruptions adding tens or possibly even a hundred million tons to that total.

Hundreds of active and dormant volcanoes worldwide, like the ones shown here in Kamchatka, continually degas and emit CO2. Image credit: Cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin / Russian Space Agency Press Services.

But that’s barely 2% of what humanity emits in a given year. Come find out the science of volcanic CO2, and put humanity’s contributions into its valid scientific perspective.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2qT6rqO

“One volcano puts out more toxic gases – one volcano – than man makes in a whole year. And when you look at this ‘climate change,’ and when you look at the regular climate change that we all have in the world, we have warm and we have cooling spells.” -John Raese

Every year, dozens of volcanoes actively erupt across the Earth’s surface. In addition, other active volcanoes continue to release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and even dormant volcanoes and other fissures in the Earth contribute to our overall carbon dioxide content. If we want to understand the effects that humanity is having on our atmosphere, we need to understand the natural contribution first.

The atmosphere of the Earth, although only 5.15 x 10^18 kilograms in mass (just under 0.0001% of the Earth’s mass), plays a tremendous role in defining the properties of our surface. Image credit: Cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin / Russian Space Agency Press Services.

Tremendous advances in measuring these natural contributions have occurred since the 1990s, as we’ve now quantified to a much-improved precision the effects of these natural components. Volcanoes of all types, on average, emit somewhere in the ballpark of 645 million tons of CO2 per year, with occasional large eruptions adding tens or possibly even a hundred million tons to that total.

Hundreds of active and dormant volcanoes worldwide, like the ones shown here in Kamchatka, continually degas and emit CO2. Image credit: Cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin / Russian Space Agency Press Services.

But that’s barely 2% of what humanity emits in a given year. Come find out the science of volcanic CO2, and put humanity’s contributions into its valid scientific perspective.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2qT6rqO