Impact of volcanic gases on the climate

[Obamot]

Hello everybody

A question must haunt some of us: what is the real impact of man in the warming and more particularly on the Co2.

I have an idea. And if we used the Icelandic volcano …> (who has to produce tons of Co2 and other gases) to measure the real absorption capacity of the atmosphere?

We knew the situation before, so it should be possible to measure the extra increase due to the volcano after. And by the same token, also possible to see with the time, a descending curve (or not) in relative data.
I think it would be profitable and would allow better set the real / good action priority, for example towards other types of gases produced by human activity and in particular those such as methane, from industrial farms intended to provide meat for slaughter.

It's a subject we do not talk about enough.

[Edit: ok, excellent: title changed]

[Christophe]

I do not know if there is so much of the CO2 in the volcano gases ... in proportion to other gases: there is very little carbon in the rocks, so in the magma, no?

This topic (thank you for creating it) can be a starting point for discussing the climate impact of volcanoes: In the past, mass extinctions began with massive volcanic eruptions ...

Edit: mea culpa, the CO2 represents from 5 to 25% volcanic gases
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcan#Gaz_volcaniques which can represent large quantities in the end.

Magmas contain dissolved volcanic gases. The degassing of magmas is a determining phenomenon in the triggering of an eruption and in the eruptive type. Degassing causes the magma to rise along the volcanic chimney which can give the explosive and violent character of an eruption in the presence of a viscous magma.

Volcanic gases are mainly composed of [16]:

* water vapor with a content of 50 to 90%;
* carbon dioxide with a content of 5 to 25%;
* Sulfur dioxide with a content of 3 to 25%.

Then come other volatile elements such as carbon monoxide, hydrogen chloride, dihydrogen, hydrogen sulphide and so on. The degassing of the magma in depth can be translated on the surface by the presence of fumaroles around which crystals, most often sulfur, can be formed.

Each eruption obviously has different% and it must even vary during the same eruption ...

ps: I would not like this subject to deviate in a "theory of the disempowerment of human activity on the climate" ...

[dedeleco]

A Nobel Prize has already proposed, following the Pinatubo (-0,5 ° C), to fill the sky with dust of volcano (sulfur) to fight global warming !!!
In 1873 an Icelandic volcano has cooled the earth to the point of provoking the French Revolution by famine !!!
In 1815, the same with Volcano in Indonesia !!
But we would not exist if there were no volcanoes!

[sen-no-sen]

Indeed dedelco, it is also a new niche (market?): Geoengineering.
See the video of David Keith: a larger specialist (several videos available on the net).
It is a solution that has made its way, which is most doubtful!
As for the volcanic impact, there are two opposite effects: the parasol effect that lasts a few months, and the greenhouse effect that lasts longer.

[Obamot]

In any case, as Christophe says, the trends it is to communicate, to live in society around an individual approach of responsibility (and not to seek to "make responsible" it is not the same ...). It is certain that man contributes to warming, but it does not matter in what proportion. It is necessary to continue the work of sensitization so that the man takes the fold of a "culture of preservation of the environment" because otherwise as a harmful species, it will end up disappearing, finally much sooner than it does. 'would have liked....

[Obamot]

In 1783, the same volcano (Vatnajökull) that erupted last week had released 20 million tons of carbon dioxide and 25 million tons of sulfur. This had caused a disruption of the climate over several years (very cold winter, floods, etc.).

(Emmanuel Garnier, "Disturbances of time, 500 years of hot and cold in Europe", from Plon, 2010).

The Laki emits a gigantic amount of sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide that, carried by the surface winds, sows desolation and death throughout continental Europe, after wiping out a third of the Icelandic population.



The 8 June 1783, a crack of 25 km opens to the south-west of Iceland's largest glacier, the Vatnajökull, in the Laki volcanic system. Huge fountains of a very fluid lava arise all along. Under the effect of the wind, the drops of lava stretch as under the action of a Murano glassmaker to form filaments called "Pele hair", after the name of the Hawaiian goddess of fire and volcanoes . Carried away, these very sharp obsidian needles are a disaster for agriculture, fields and meadows becoming unusable.

The casting lasts eight months. It covers 565 km2. In all, the crack emits 12,3 km3 lava, a gigantic amount that makes the Icelandic event the most important effusion of any volcanological history.

The ashes are ejected in smaller quantities but it is the magmatic gases emitted that make this eruption one of the heaviest consequences: 20 million tons of carbon dioxide and 25 million tons of sulfur escape from the craters. On the island, three quarters of the livestock are wiped out. A general famine ensued, killing more than 10 people, or nearly a third of the population.
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The event has an impact on the continent's climate throughout the year 1783. The released gases are indeed installed in the troposphere where rains, clouds and surface winds circulate. But that summer, a high-pressure front unusually installed in north-eastern Europe attracts volcanic fog on the continent. A toxic cloud begins to travel over Scandinavia, then Germany, France and Italy. At the end of June, his presence is noted in Lisbon, London, Moscow and Syria.

Everywhere strange phenomena are noted: the solar "fireball" is without radiation; a "dry" fog appears, with a "sulphurous" odor, in a "distressing" air. The people are worried. The perplexed scholars. Some doctors establish a timid connection with the Icelandic eruption.

It is certain in any case that 1783 recorded an excess mortality: of + 30% in England, + 50% in certain French regions. Today, a demographic extrapolation places around 160 deaths attributable to the Laki volcano.

It is not proved, even if the legend is pretty, that the Icelandic phenomenon is at the origin of the French Revolution. But the climatic sequence of the following years provides hazardous intellectual temptations.

Following the darkening of the atmosphere by dust and volcanic ash, an exceptional cold wave invades Europe as early as December 1783. A coat of snow covers France, Belgium, Bohemia. In February-March 1784, the Atlantic anticyclone folds sharply, causing a warmth. Then begin a series of catastrophic floods. The rivers are emerging from their beds in Paris, Liege and Namur, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Bratislava and Zagreb. The damage is incalculable. The following summer is scorching and crops so abundant that the price of wheat collapses. The following winters are cold, the summers rainy. The security of livelihoods is compromised, the confidence of the populations strongly undermined.

In France, as Emmanuel Garnier notes in his book on the disturbances of time *, the climate crisis of 1784 inaugurates a new political practice. The monarchy, which has been intervening for several decades in favor of the affected populations by means of tax relief, this time materializes its aid in the form of direct payments to the victims. It's the first time. The solidarity, hitherto left to individual charity or religious works, is assumed by the monarch's budget. Louis XVI thus distributes three million pounds, the equivalent of 1% of the revenues of the kingdom, a considerable amount for the time compared to the 2% paid by the state after hurricane Lothar in 1999.

The Emperor of Austria-Hungary does the same with regard to the victims of the Banat. The prince-elector of Saxony also compensates his family while being concerned to establish a warning system to minimize future damage.
These first royal gestures are part of a new conception of the state, territory and populations. "If an accident occurs twice in a row, it must stop being unforeseeable in the eyes of an administration in charge of preventing it," writes the Encyclopédie to the authorities in the eighteenth century.

Louis XVI takes note of the change of perception. Since the climate no longer depends on the moods of God or his saints, processions are useless. They are replaced by public prevention and compensation strategies. In the moment of adversity, the monarch is a dispenser of "unhelpful help to the unfortunate", sowing the subsidies with equal kindness to the cities and the countryside. Nine years before having his head cut, Louis XVI is "The Beneficent". The Laki volcano did not provoke the revolution in France but it made a good king.

* Emmanuel Garnier, "The disturbances of time, 500 years of heat
and cold in Europe ", Plon, 2010.

Source (limited time?): http://www.letemps.ch/Page/Uuid/620a0a5 ... e62198ebf7

[zorglub]

I tell myself

since the time we create CO2, there should be a decrease in the volume of oxygen in the atmosphere but when is it?
is it replaced as and when (???) if the volume is the same
in this case, there would be an increase in the volume of the atmosphere
but Lavoisier said: nothing is lost nothing is created ...........

mystery?