Climate Change

Climate Modification and Global Warming are one of the most hotly debated topics of our age. People are largely divided on this debate, as most scientists and activists blame human activities hazardous to the environment to be the primary agents for the worsening of Global Warming and the subsequent climate shift patterns.

However, what is often ignored is the fact that climate change is a natural phenomenon. We can understand that if we only consider how volcanic eruptions can affect the atmosphere and the environment, which of course is a phenomenon that had been going on for more than a billion years, considering the estimated age of our planet.

Although volcanic eruptions do not take place continuously, but they always happen with a big bang. Although small eruptions barely have an impact, but massive eruptions, like Mt. Pinatubo eruption in 1991, can have colossal effects on the atmosphere.

A massive eruption can single-handedly raise the Greenhouse gases over a fairly large area dramatically, which can engulf the atmosphere, along with volcanic ash, in the form of numerous deadly gases, such as Sulphur dioxide and Carbon dioxide, in such a way that sunlight would barely be reaching the affected areas. This could actually reduce the warming effect for some time.

A classical case is the Mt. St. Helens eruption of 1980, which was so massive that it defaced the landmark mountain in Washington State. The explosion flattened everything within 17 miles, and about 540 million tons of ash covered an area of no less than 22,000 square miles. The 12 mile volcanic ash cloud which was formed within the ten minutes of the eruption, further stretched out across the half of the United States, but there was barely an impact on the global temperature or climate pattern.

However, the El Chichon eruption of 1982 in Mexico, though much smaller in magnitude than that of the Mt. St. Helens eruption, but it had a significant impact on the climatic conditions, yet the average temperatures only cooled down by one degree.

This led the scientists to find out that the effect of volcanic eruptions on the climate is very much dependent upon the nature of the eruption. The debris from the Mt. St. Helens eruption found its way to the ground fairly quickly, but the sulphurous material that was exploded out into the atmosphere during the El Chichon eruption stayed up there for quite some time.

What really is true is that climate modifications and changes take place over very long periods of time and cannot be correctly measured to derive a decisive conclusion in a few years. Since we have not started paying attention to the subject very long ago, we cannot really say for sure scientifically how the climatic modifications take place and what really are the factors bringing about these changes. We also know through geological and volcanological evidence that much greater eruptions have occurred in the past than what we have witnessed recently. Surely, those eruptions would have had some serious impact on the climate.

The answer to the question of the existence of relationship between volcanic eruptions and climate modifications is probably yes. But we have also learned that this relationship largely depends on the nature of the eruption and does not have effects that last for a very long period of time.