Tambora Volcano Effects

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The biggest volcanic eruption ever recorded by humans was the eruption of Mount Tambora on Sumbawa Island, Indonesia, in 1815 (livescience.com, pg. 1). It ranked “super colossal” on the Volcanic Explosivity Index, the second highest rating. The eruption resulted in a brief period of significant climate change that led to cases of extreme weather. Volcanoes can cause great devastation and harm to people, animals, environments. For instance, fast-moving lava, lahars, and other effects after an eruption can kill people and damage property on it’s way down. Above all, volcanic eruptions can even cause long term effects on the climate by making the world colder.
In 1985, a volcano named “Nevado del Ruiz” killed over 20,000 people in Tolima, Colombia. …show more content…

Although Kilauea is a medium to small sized volcano, the Observatory says that it has been releasing lava for the past 24 years. The Observatory also said that “Kilauea has been releasing more than twice the amount of noxious sulfur dioxide gas (SO2) as the single dirtiest power plant on the U.S. mainland”. Some of the particles of dust and ash released into the air are so light that they can stay in the stratosphere for months and travel (sometimes worldwide), blocking sunlight and causing cooling over large areas (scied.ucar.edu, paragraph 5). But, the sulfur dioxide let into the air by an eruption does a much better job of cooling climates. It goes into the stratosphere, combines with water to form sulfuric acid aerosols. It then makes a “haze of tiny droplets in the stratosphere that reflects incoming solar radiation, causing cooling of the Earth’s surface.” (scied.ucar.edu, paragraph 6). The aerosols can stay in the stratosphere for up to three years, causing significant cooling wherever the wind moves it. The highest estimate of global volcanic emission, .26, is way less than the estimate of human emitted CO2 in 2010, which is 33.6 (volcanoes.usgs.gov). Although humans produce more CO2 than volcanoes do, there has been times where volcanic eruptions have caused temporary below-average temperatures,

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