could yellowstone reverse global warming?

[The Yosemite Bear]

discussion at work about weather or not an eruption from the Yellowstone super volcano, could block out enough sunlight and make things generably miserable to reverse the effects of human produced climate change?

[loomer]

Reverse it? Good lord, no. Temporarily cool the planet? Sure.

You know what else it'd do? Completely and utterly fuck up America and Europe. All that ash'll come down, and around the volcano (for at least a few hundred kilometres) be so heavy that it could collapse buildings. It'll interfere badly with farming thanks to the haze in the air and the sudden deposition of a light coating of ash (though that'll be beneficial in the long run, since volcanic ash is a decent fertilizer, in the short term it could be pretty bad for the crops and hell for the livestock) and you'll have health issues from ash inhalation.

Eventually, all that ash is going to settle and we'll be just as fucked as before. It might give us a little more time to reverse some of the damage, but it's definitely not a permanent fix or even a desirable event in the cost-gain ratio sense. Have a watch of the Supervolcano docudrama - a bit exagerrated and inaccurate scientifically, but it gets the base point across, and you might enjoy it.

[The Yosemite Bear]

actually part of the arguement was that so many people would die in the first world, and so many more would die elsewhere due to short term crop failures, that it might cool down the human problem some....

[Broomstick]

Having Yellowstone cure global warming is like say having your leg chopped off cured your gouty big toe. It's taking a bad situation and replacing it with what will probably be a much worse one.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Having Yellowstone cure global warming is like say having your leg chopped off cured your gouty big toe. It's taking a bad situation and replacing it with what will probably be a much worse one.

I'd say its more analogoud to putting out a wildfire with a tactical nuke; it'll work, but the collan your original problem.

[Darth Wong]

According to the atmospheric modeling they performed on the ancient K-T asteroid impact, even the microscopic particulates from a global mass-extinction event would be largely scrubbed from the upper atmosphere within six months, and while I admit I'm no expert on the Yellowstone caldera, I would be surprised if it exceeded the power of a 100 million megaton asteroid impact.

Assuming its effects are more confined to North America instead of bringing global temperatures down to freezing even at the equator like the K-T asteroid impact, I would tend to think (based on the above) that the direct environmental effects would be largely overcome within a few months. The lingering effects would have more to do with the massive loss of life and infrastructure and vegetation. A large portion of the US would become a withered wasteland, its population either dead or fled (mostly dead). I would imagine that an entire season of agriculture would go down the drain, and water supplies might be seriously impacted everywhere outside the Great Lakes region as well (the water cycle depends on sunlight, after all).

It would be like rebuilding after a regional nuclear attack. Unfortunately, if the ash is scrubbed out of the atmosphere in a few months, then I can't see why the retarding effect on global warming would last any longer than that. No idea what would happen to CO2 output; the loss of a significant chunk of the United States population would remove its contribution to global CO2 output, but the loss of vegetation over a large area would counteract that, and the rotting dead vegetation would actually produce CO2.

[andrewgpaul]

Also, don't volcanos put out CO2 and the like? Is it likely that the short-term temperature reduction due to particulates in he air would be outweighed by the extra CO2?

[Bluewolf]

Frankly it would not be the blessing you'd think it'd be. Putting aside the horrible amount of death and destruction caused by Yellowstone going pop, it'd cause more damage to the Earth. Ecosystems would get royally fucked over as plants die causing the whole chain to collapse. Lack of sunlight will aid this effect and this also means survival of humanity is a lot harder due to crops not growing.

To sum it up, it'd be awful.

[Themightytom]

oh great, the Reset button buries new England under ash?

I have a question about the collatoral damage since I am within the "OhShit" zone. Why would the weight off the ash be enough to crush buildings, especially when the buildings around here are built to displace huge loads of snow?

[Darth Wong]

Also, don't volcanos put out CO2 and the like? Is it likely that the short-term temperature reduction due to particulates in he air would be outweighed by the extra CO2?

Volcanoes would put out various greenhouse gases, but they're transient. Human output is more problematic because it is a constant input into the system, not a transient event.

[Bluewolf]

oh great, the Reset button buries new England under ash?

It'd be as much a reset button as a small bomb on some electronics would be to be honest. One filled with nails.

Though many other areas of vegertation would be ruined, how would rainforests like in Brazil cope with such a sconario. Would the effects be far reaching enough to hit them?

[Darth Wong]

oh great, the Reset button buries new England under ash?

It'd be as much a reset button as a small bomb on some electronics would be to be honest. One filled with nails.

Though many other areas of vegertation would be ruined, how would rainforests like in Brazil cope with such a sconario. Would the effects be far reaching enough to hit them?

That's kind of impossible to say if we don't know how violently it will erupt. Past eruptions of that particular hotspot have varied widely in their output, from ~300 times Mt St Helens to more than 2000 times Mt St Helens.

[Bluewolf]

Oh, christ. Thats no short feat. I know it was Supervolcanoe but that is nasty. To be honest I'd think it'd not do the rainforests any good i it were low end or high end. Even a more low end blast will choke the world and blotch out the sun.

Oh and another bad side effect from all this: Economic collapse. It'd help cascade the problems that such a diaster would already have and eliminate a lot of production ability. Even more reason not to want such an erruption.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

oh great, the Reset button buries new England under ash?

I have a question about the collatoral damage since I am within the "OhShit" zone. Why would the weight off the ash be enough to crush buildings, especially when the buildings around here are built to displace huge loads of snow?

Mostly because a cubic unit of ash (being comprised of pulverized rock and some trapped air) is far more dense (between 700 kg/m3 to 2450 kg/m3) than a cubic unit of snow (being comprised of water ice crystals and a lot of trapped air. Density ranges from 80 kg/m3 to 300 kg/m3) And that's before it rains and all that volcanic ash becomes cement.

A meter worth of lightweight pumice ashfall is worth ten meters of freshly fallen snow, and a bit more than three meters of snow that has been given time to settle. A meter worth of heavyweight ashfall is the equivalent of thirty meters of new-fallen snow.

[Darth Wong]

oh great, the Reset button buries new England under ash?

Why New England? The ash zones from previous eruptions looked like they were distributed much more toward the western part of the country.

http://www.livescience.com/php/multimed ... one_02.jpg

If the plume is like some of the past really big eruptions, it would encompass:
- California
- Washington
- Oregon
- Montana
- Idaho
- Wyoming
- Nevada
- Utah
- South Dakota
- Nebraska
- Colorado
- New Mexico
- Arizona
- Texas
- Oklahoma
- Kansas

Basically, the entire West and MidWest. Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana would also catch some of it. Of course, other environmental effects would extend much farther, but I don't see why New England would be buried in ash.

[Broomstick]

oh great, the Reset button buries new England under ash?

I have a question about the collatoral damage since I am within the "OhShit" zone. Why would the weight off the ash be enough to crush buildings, especially when the buildings around here are built to displace huge loads of snow?

Oh, absolutely the ash would collapse buildings. It's not snow, which is less dense than an equal volume of water, it's rock. That shit is heavy. One inch of volcanic ash will collapse most building roofs, even in areas built for heavy snow. But only in the most extreme case would New England see significant ash.

We covered the Yellowstone "oh shit!" zone in a prior thread. It extends well into Canada, it's not just a US problem. Of course, eruptions vary greatly in intensity and duration, but a true eruption of the caldera, as opposed to a pressure-release outgassing or small lava flow, would crash ALL agriculture in ALL of North America for at least one growing season. The central area, including the Great Plains, would have to be re-colonized from the coastal regions. It's an interesting question as to whether or not water supplies would remain reliable even in the Great Lakes regions - Ontario will probably be OK, but Michigan and Superior, possibly Huron and Erie as well, may be sufficiently fouled by ash and acidic rain to fuck things up badly. As major cities like Milwaukee, Chicago, and Toledo are heavily dependent on the Great Lakes for their water, having something happen to render those lakes undrinkable would be a HUGE problem. I know there are sufficient wells dug west and south of Chicago that there would be enough water to sustain life, but rationing could be a real possibility. Then again, if you have millions of people fleeing to the coasts - and you will - local water for the Great Lakes won't be such an issue as there will be much less demand once the refugees have moved on.

Honestly, a major Yellowstone eruption will fuck up agriculture in Europe, too. A lot of people will starve to death, there just won't be enough food to go around, period. The major agricultural regions of two continents will be out of commission for at least one year, probably 5-10 for the North American "bread basket" region.

[Darth Wong]

Well, at least we'd end the obesity problem.

[Broomstick]

Yes - I'd like to further clarify my post, but don't have time right now. I would like to say that Europe's agriculture won't be fucked by ash, but rather by short term temperature drops and lack of sunlight. Just to avoid confusion.

[Darth Wong]

I wonder if anyone's ever written any fiction describing life after such an event. It would be such a huge catastrophe (and a somewhat realistic scenario, unlike many other such alt-scenarios), and the world power structure would be irrevocably changed afterwards.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Reverse it? Good lord, no. Temporarily cool the planet? Sure.

You know what else it'd do? Completely and utterly fuck up America and Europe. All that ash'll come down, and around the volcano (for at least a few hundred kilometres) be so heavy that it could collapse buildings. It'll interfere badly with farming thanks to the haze in the air and the sudden deposition of a light coating of ash (though that'll be beneficial in the long run, since volcanic ash is a decent fertilizer, in the short term it could be pretty bad for the crops and hell for the livestock) and you'll have health issues from ash inhalation.

Eventually, all that ash is going to settle and we'll be just as fucked as before. It might give us a little more time to reverse some of the damage, but it's definitely not a permanent fix or even a desirable event in the cost-gain ratio sense. Have a watch of the Supervolcano docudrama - a bit exagerrated and inaccurate scientifically, but it gets the base point across, and you might enjoy it.

You're discounting the fact that America would be turned into a post-industrial thirdworld hellhole with a corresponding sharp drop in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions which are currently a huge fraction of the total, and the vast worldwide global depression would further reduce production of greenhouse gasses. That wouldn't stop it either but would guarantee it doesn't get worse.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Well, at least we'd end the obesity problem.

*snicker*

Interestingly enough the ash zone won't hit Puget Sound nor the line of the BNSF Main across Stevens and Mariah Passes, so the US would actually still have a functional Pacific port and railroad connecting it to more intact parts of the country.

Also I suspect the ash deposition radius sees a sharp drop to the outer edges, especially to the west, because the prevailing winds blow toward the east in the western part of the country (this would have also affected the distribution of fallout in a nuclear war, it's interesting to see the plots with neat fallout zones consisting of cones falling back from major detonation points.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I wonder if anyone's ever written any fiction describing life after such an event. It would be such a huge catastrophe (and a somewhat realistic scenario, unlike many other such alt-scenarios), and the world power structure would be irrevocably changed afterwards.

The discovery channel movie 'Supervolcano' gave some pretty good glimpses into a post-yellowstone world. Basically, you lose all habitable land from the rockies to chicago, and south to phoenix. California actually gets spared the worst. The US would have to recall its' military and it would stop being an exporter of food. Those two things right there RADICALLY alter the balance of power in the world, and even if there isn't an ice age there would be a few years of temperatures being 3-5 degrees colder. One line was very poingiant for me: After that, time started with Yellowstone. We'd say it was three years after Yellowstone, or ten years before. It redefined the perspective of our civilization.

After a large eruptive event, it isn't the CO2 making things hotter you have to worry about, it is the cooling effect of the sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere.

[Simon_Jester]

...Is there any way to defuse a volcano?

Sigh. Probably not.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

...Is there any way to defuse a volcano?

Sigh. Probably not.

Well, I did have a slightly insane idea of drilling a series of massive bore holes 12 - 15km under the earth into the Caldera and then run some substance with a boiling point of close to 300 C through them which would be turned into superheated steam which, back up from the earth, would spin massive turbines to generate green electric power for much of the western half of the country AND begin the process of cooling the rock in the caldera to lessen the chances and severity of another eruption. I suspect this would cost trillions of dollars to effect on the necessary scale.

[Darth Wong]

...Is there any way to defuse a volcano?

Sigh. Probably not.

If the hotspot slides under a thicker part of the tectonic plate, it's possible that any eruption would either be suppressed indefinitely or greatly reduced in magnitude.