Of course, understanding volcanoes today is fantastic. It could help save lives and property. But in geology, what’s past is present, and so it’s also helpful to understand processes and results in the geologic past to also prepare for the possibilities of the future. Which is a long-winded way of saying that a team of scientists have studied the end-Permian extinction 250 million years ago and found that volcanoes added to the demise of 80 to 90 percent of life on Earth.

Published in the journal Science Advances, a new paper provides an analysis of minerals found in southern China that show there was a set of volcanic eruptions that produced a volcanic winter. That winter lowered temperatures around the globe and added stress to the biological systems in existence, adding to the list of causes that wiped out so many species.

This is a multi-step process. First, volcanic eruptions known as the Siberian Traps produced an incredible amount of volcanic rock in Russia’s Siberia province. Those eruptions released a ton of carbon dioxide which decreased the oxygenation of the oceans and killed off marine life. Additionally, the eruptions covered the land in layers of ash, which wiped out a lot of flora and fauna. And finally, as co-author Michael Rampino explains: Sulfuric acid atmospheric aerosols produced by the eruptions may have been the cause of rapid global cooling of several degrees, prior to the severe warming seen across the end-Permian mass-extinction interval.

But those last eruptions weren’t part of the Siberian Traps. They were located in South China, and included dozens of eruptions over time. And there are likely eruptions that happened elsewhere that added even more to the environmental stress.

What it comes down to is that the end-Permian extinction wasn’t caused by a single event but rather a series of intense and large volcanic eruptions in a variety of places on Earth, all of which added up to an incredible loss of biological diversity. Oof.

More Information

NYU press release

“Felsic volcanism as a factor driving the end-Permian mass extinction,” Hua Zhang et al., 2021 November 17, Science Advances