New data on the eruptions of Earth's supervolcanoes show that they are capable of causing an eighty-year volcanic winter across the planet.
Supervolcanoes of the Earth
New data on the eruptions of the Yellowstone Supervolcano (USA) show that they can cause an eighty-year volcanic winter across the planet. Its scale will be such that the Moscow region will turn into a tundra, and snow will lie on the Russian Plain for most of the year. America will also suffer from the new climate, albeit to a lesser extent. Why can Yellowstone become worse for Russia and Canada than for the States, and can a century-old famine after such an eruption destroy all people on Earth?
Cinema and the media for half of the 20th century told that atomic war would destroy everyone - not by explosions, but by radioactive rains and nuclear winter. It, according to the myth-making of the propagandists, was supposed to come from the conflagrations of cities set on fire by nuclear strikes. The soot would rise up, obscuring the Sun - and, as a result, years of light frosts at the equator and minus 50 in central Russia.
Since then, hordes of radioactive mutants have flooded films about the "nuclear apocalypse", and then computer games have tightened. It's funny, but during these same years, scientists around the world found out that nuclear weapons cannot do anything like this. But something else is quite capable, and this is something - supervolcanoes like Yellowstone.
Why should we calm down and stop being afraid of the bomb
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To understand what a volcanic winter is really terrible, we should compare it with a nuclear war. The third world, with the full expenditure of the full arsenal of warheads from all countries of the world, will emit 50-150 million tons of soot into the atmosphere from burning cities. Soviet and American researchers of the "nuclear winter" in the 1980s, using climate modeling, assessed this as a disaster. According to their estimates, summer temperatures in mainland Russia will drop by 35 degrees (below winter), and in the United States - by 20 degrees. And for about a dozen years, temperatures in both countries will not return to normal, which will completely exclude the possibility of normal agriculture. Yes, scientists said, the atomic strikes themselves would kill a smaller part of the population of the two superpowers - but a nuclear winter would surely finish off everyone who remained with many years of hunger.
There are a couple of big problems with these calculations. The average power of nuclear charges today is from 1.2 megatons or less. An explosion of such force cannot ensure the ingress of soot and ash into the stratosphere, from where it does not rain. And everything that got below (in the troposphere) is quickly washed away by rains (for example, the infamous Hiroshima "black rain"). A nuclear winter without soot entering the stratosphere is impossible. Supporters of the "winter" hypothesis began to assume that the soot, absorbing sunlight, would heat up and rise higher, still reaching the stratosphere. But no one has carried out any experiments of this kind, which is why this assumption is not supported by anything.
The second, and more important, point is that there have already been superpowerful explosions with the release of light-absorbing particles on Earth. The eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 had a yield of 70 megatons - more powerful than any human bomb. From this, 10 billion tons of solid rocks in the form of small particles were thrown up to a height of 35 kilometers. A single average volcano gave 60-70 times more emissions into the atmosphere (and higher) than an atomic war can give. And this is logical: nuclear explosions are made at a height, otherwise the relief will protect ground targets from the blast wave. The volcano, on the other hand, spends all its energy not in the atmosphere, but on the ground, which is why it raises more dust.
Ash cloud over Mount Pinatubo three days after the eruption, Philippines, 1991.
In addition, volcanic eruptions produce a lot of sulfur dioxide (Pinatubo - 20 million tons). SO2 immediately creates powerful anti-greenhouse aerosols that are far more dangerous than soot from nuclear fires. Soot prevents the Earth's surface from heating up, but warms the atmosphere around it. Ultimately, this heat should periodically tear the planet's "soot blanket", allowing the surface to heat up. Sulfur aerosols simply reflect the energy of the Sun into space - that is, the air does not heat up even at altitude. Usually sulfur dioxide and its derivatives are not dangerous, they are quickly washed out of the troposphere by rain. Pinatubo and more powerful volcanic eruptions are scary because they hurl SO2 into the stratosphere, where there is no rain, and from where aerosols can descend only very slowly - under their own weight.
It is easy to see that in 1991, Pinatubo polluted the atmosphere dozens of times more than a nuclear war could. And what, has the temperature really dropped by 20-35 degrees? Average global temperatures in 1991-1993 did indeed decrease - however, by 0.5 degrees. Against this background, the stories about nuclear winter look very dubious. And the authors of works about it do not mention a word about how 150 million tons of "nuclear" emissions into the atmosphere will be able to do what even 10 billion tons of real volcanic emissions have not mastered.
Parking lot in the Philippines after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, cars are covered with ash. F
Philippines after Pinatubo: Ashes falling from heaven accumulated on the skin of the aircraft, changed its center of gravity and lifted its nose up.
What volcanoes can, and what are supervolcanoes
It is worth understanding: the 70 megatons of Pinatubo in 1991 is a fairly small eruption. Krakatoa in 1883 gave 200 megatons and 25 cubic kilometers of emissions, Tambor in 1815 - 800 megatons. After Tambora (billions of tons of ash and SO2 emissions) in June 1816, snow began to fall in the state of New York, and this is south of Sochi. In Quebec, at the same time, 30 centimeters of fresh snow fell in a few days. The moon in the sky often looked either bluish or even completely green - the particles ejected by the eruption distorted the usual colors of celestial bodies.
Munch's painting "The Scream" was painted after Krakatoa - and accurately shows changes in sky color.
Our country was seriously affected by only one such eruption - the Peruvian Huaynaputina volcano in 1600. After the sulfur aerosols enter the atmosphere, they are quickly carried across the planet. Therefore, summer frosts then became a frequent guest in our country. In 1601-1603 there was no harvest in the country, which is why the Great Famine and Troubles began.
Munch's painting "The Scream" was painted after Krakatoa - and accurately shows the changes in the color of the sky.
But, to be honest, these are all little things. The listed volcanoes are ordinary volcanoes, to which the hot liquid melt comes from the earth's crust. Supervolcanoes are much more dangerous, because magma comes to them from the upper mantle, where pressures and temperatures are much higher. 70,000 years ago in Indonesia, one such exploded - the supervolcano Toba. The power of the eruption is difficult to calculate, but it is clear that it was much larger than the entire nuclear arsenal of people.
7 trillion tons of solid particles rose into the air, of which 2 trillion were ash. "Nuclear Winter" with its 150 million tons of soot against this background is children's toys. A real volcanic winter has come. Average annual temperatures dropped, according to modern estimates, by 1-3 degrees. It seems that a little, but this is the difference in the average annual temperature between Yaroslavl (plus three) and Murmansk (plus one). We remind you that there are fields near Yaroslavl, and tundra around Murmansk.
It was not only the cold that killed. The fact is that for each degree of drop in average annual temperatures, the evaporation of water from the earth's surface decreases by several percent. Without fumes, there is nowhere to take water for rain over land. Many regions have experienced a long-term drought. With her modest two degrees, Toba destroyed most of the then living Homo sapiens.
In addition to cold weather and drought, South Asia was also hit by the death of soils. In India, a layer of ash that fell after this eruption (recall, it took place in distant Indonesia), reached 10-15 centimeters. On the soils covered with it, no plants grew for a long time, herbivores began to die, followed by hunters. Almost all people who managed to leave Africa died, and even on the Black Continent the total number of people dropped to several thousand.
Yellowstone: main caliber
Okay, Toba drastically reduced the population of our species and destroyed all human colonists in Asia. And what about Yellowstone, which is so frightened by the media?
New work by American geologists from the University of California at Santa Barbara (USA) showed that the last major eruption of Yellowstone 639,000 years ago was actually two eruptions at once - with interruptions for centuries. All in all, more than a thousand cubic kilometers of ash was thrown into the atmosphere - many trillions of tons.
The most interesting in the work turned out to be temperature measurements in the layers that followed immediately after the eruptions. Both times the average annual temperature dropped by more than three degrees. What happened is tantamount to the transformation of central Russia into the tundra of the Kola Peninsula. What is especially important is that the duration of both volcanic winters 639 thousand years ago was about 80 years in a row.
The Yellowstone supervolcano does not currently look like a formidable destroyer. Only the caldera remained of it. This is a giant basin, so huge that it occupies most of the national park of the same name, includes a lake and many geysers - the main tourist attraction of these places.
Imagine an eruption of this kind happen tomorrow. The northern countries, especially Canada and Russia, will be the hardest hit. The climate of these places is not very favorable for agriculture anyway. Volgograd and Rostov-on-Don, with their + 8-9 degrees Celsius, in theory will retain the possibility of agriculture - however, at the level of the Moscow region and the Tula region. But the rain on these lands may not fall - and so for 80 years in a row. Who will grow bread in such conditions? It is stupid to rely on imports from abroad, as in the Soviet era. The then exporter # 1 (USA), and at the same time Canada, will be covered with a thick layer of ash, on which nothing will grow at all. Yes, Florida and California won't get enough ash, but after all, a third of a billion US residents will also need to eat something. Crops will fall even where there is no ash. The EU is unlikely to be able to export anything after the average annual temperature has dropped by three degrees.
Under the Yellowstone caldera, at a depth of about 8 thousand meters, there is a giant magma bubble with a temperature of more than 800 degrees Celsius. Hot springs bring carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide to the surface.
Reduced harvests will knock down Africa and Latin America, without rain, this is inevitable. But it is better to forget about UN food aid at once. 80 years of desperate hunger will force everyone to accumulate whatever they can grow. No one will help anyone abroad. Even if in some year there is enough grain, every sane ruler will simply put it in storage. It is difficult to say how many people will die from Yellowstone in the United States, but we can definitely say that hunger and cold will become a catastrophe on a planetary scale, from which no one will hide. By the end of 80 years of volcanic winter, the populations of the northernmost countries may decline significantly.
Of course, these will not be all the "bonuses" of the new super-eruption of Yellowstone. 80 years of the Murmansk climate will turn the forests around us into tundra or forest-tundra. Snow will cover the Russian Plain for most of the year. We just modestly keep silent about the fate of Siberia: everyone can imagine it himself.
It could always be worse
If by chance it seemed to you that the transformation of the Motherland into a snowy desert and the death of an unknown number of millions of people from a century-old glory is a problem, then we hasten to console you. There have been worse cases in the history of the planet.
By themselves, supervolcanoes cannot strike harder than Yellowstone. Yes, from the trillions of tons of ash in the stratosphere, many will die. But as we know from the history of our kind Homo, man does not die so easily. We are very strong. Even half-naked hunters in Africa 70,000 years ago only lost the bulk of their population. 639 thousand years ago, there were several species of the same genus Homo on Earth. None of them, as we know, died out. Today's people know how to make canned food, can grow yeast, and make industrial greenhouses heated by water from power plants. They can handle it. Although not all.
Supervolcanoes can be spurred on, however. No, journalistic stories about the fact that nuclear bombs can launch Yellowstone have nothing to do with reality. The frequency of seismic waves capable of launching super-eruptions is much lower than those that can generate even the most powerful thermonuclear bombs. But there are forces in the Universe much worse than even our best bombs.
66 million years ago, an asteroid about ten kilometers in diameter hit the Earth in what is now Mexico. The power of the explosion was 100 million megatons - 12,000 modern nuclear arsenals of people. Shear and longitudinal seismic waves from the event went around the entire planet and formed in the opposite, eastern hemisphere. Even before the asteroid, volcanoes began to erupt far in the East, creating the Deccan Traps - huge lava fields that once occupied one and a half million square kilometers. Immediately after the impact, the influx of magma from the mantle into this region increased sharply.
Imagine that you fill a large rubber ball with water and punch a small hole on one of its sides. Then someone took and struck a powerful blow at the ball with a sledgehammer - from the side opposite to the hole. What happens to the jet from the hole? The impact of the Chicxulub asteroid intensified volcanism around the world - including Hindustan. More than 70 percent of the Deccan ladders poured out immediately following the asteroid impact.
The scale of the volcanic winter caused by the Deccan Traps is much stronger than the Yellowstone warm-up. The outpouring of lava went on for tens of thousands of years, and all this time the temperature on Earth remained very low, and precipitation was scarce. Of the dinosaurs, only one group of maniraptors survived - those who gave rise to birds. And they, apparently, overcame the disaster of the Chicxulub and the Deccan Traps only because they already knew how to fly and lost their teeth, and this greatly helped to find the food that had become a rarity.
It cannot be said that the worst catastrophe happened 66 million years ago. 252 million years ago, a suspiciously similar story happened in Siberia. Siberian traps are even larger than Deccan ones. Alas, we do not know where the asteroid could have fallen, capable of provoking the Siberian catastrophe. The fact is that the oceanic crust, where the impact should have occurred, "does not live" for more than 200 million years. It is noticeably heavier than continental, and constantly sinks in the mantle, where it melts without a trace.
Siberian traps - colossal layers of lava that erupted a quarter of a billion years ago.
Until very recently, it was believed that the largest Permian extinction was caused by a sharp rise in temperature, which brought about emissions of carbon dioxide. In 2017, new work by Swiss researchers showed that everything was the same as with the extinction of the dinosaurs. Emissions of ash and sulfur dioxide, on the contrary, led to a sharp drop in temperature and severe glaciation. Only the Permian extinction was worse than the one that killed the dinosaurs: 252 million years ago even insects died out en masse, which did not happen 66 million years ago.
If tomorrow is a war, if tomorrow is a campaign, as always, no one is ready here
Contrary to some press stories, people do not yet know how to predict supervolcanic eruptions. Will Yellowstone explode tomorrow, or will the supervolcano of the Phlegraean fields again cover Europe with ashes to Donbass, like 40,000 years ago? Honestly, nobody knows. They could just as well sleep for tens of thousands of years.
But what if it does happen? Yes, we can neither predict nor stop the super eruption. But people as a species will survive it, albeit with millions of victims. It is more difficult if a large asteroid falls on the planet and spurs monstrous eruptions, such as those created by the Deccan or Siberian traps. Today the planet has no means of anti-asteroid defense. However, there are no large asteroids yet, whose orbits can intersect with the Earth's. But if they do appear, it will not be possible to quickly respond to the threat. We do not have the necessary super-heavy rockets, and the detonation of such an asteroid is not the easiest thing.
You can notice in advance only those of them that belong to our solar system. They have repeating orbits in which they move around the Sun. In October 2017, astronomers first saw an asteroid that could appear without any warning at all. This is the interstellar asteroid A / 2017 U1, discovered only on October 14, 2017. Three days before that, he approached our planet by 24 million kilometers. The object came to us, presumably from the Vega system. Since the body approached from the direction of the Sun, until the very last moment it was not visible through telescopes - the luminary obscured A / 2017 U1.
Such a "gift of fate" can easily spur a new series of catastrophic volcanic eruptions. Most likely, neither people nor other large animals will be able to survive the new Permian catastrophe.
Alexander Berezin