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VOLCANOLOGY

Flood basalt buildup warms climate

Nature Geoscience volume 15, pages 342–343 (2022)Cite this article

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Flood basalts are connected to Earth’s most extreme environmental crises, yet warming is sometimes observed before surface eruptions. Modelling reveals that a complex buildup of basalt intrusions into the crust releases enough CO2 to cause this pre-eruptive warming.

As LIPs intrude the crust or erupt onto Earth’s surface, they release gases that cool the climate on short timescales and cause global warming on long timescales3. The Deccan Traps and Columbia River Basalt Group, two of Earth’s best-studied LIPs, show broad temporal correlation with Cretaceous/Palaeogene warming and boundary extinction that resulted in the death of the dinosaurs4 and the global warming of the Miocene Climate Optimum5, respectively. However, ascribing a causal role for the LIPs is complicated by the fact that analytical and modelling efforts have suggested that greenhouse gases contained in the flood basalts themselves would be insufficient to cause either the end-Cretaceous6 or the Miocene7 environmental disruption. Indeed, comparisons of carbon cycle modelling to palaeotemperature records have suggested that Deccan Traps volcanism was not relevant to the Cretaceous/Paleogene extinction, because the bulk of CO2 appears to have been released prior to surface eruptions and long before the extinction itself8.

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Fig. 1: Columbia River Basalt Group, WA, USA.

Jennifer Kasbohm.

References

  1. Kasbohm, J., Schoene, B. & Burgess, S. in Large Igneous Provinces: A Driver of Global Environmental and Biotic Changes (eds Ernst, R. E. et al.) 27–79 (American Geophysical Union, Wiley, 2021).

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  1. Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Jennifer Kasbohm

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  1. Jennifer Kasbohm
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Correspondence to Jennifer Kasbohm.

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Kasbohm, J. Flood basalt buildup warms climate. Nat. Geosci. 15, 342–343 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-022-00944-z

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