Sunday, October 28, 2007

We NEED a huge volcanic eruption
(or two)

My wife reported that she saw this story on Anak Krakatoa creep across the bottom of the screen on one of this morning’s news shows. I couldn’t help but think that should the “Son of Krakatoa” live up to its Dad’s performance of 1883, some of the concerns of Global Warming might be put on the back burner for a decade or so. The ash of the 1883 eruption, spewed into the upper atmosphere, has been credited with a drop in the global temperatures in 1.2 degrees Celsius.

While not quite as impressive as the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora which created the “Year Without a Summer,” it (Krakatoa) is still indicative of the power of nature.

[On a side note: I wonder if people of the St. Lawrence Valley wondered if they had pissed off Mother Nature in 1816? Or did they go about trying to figure out what they had done to cause the drop in temperature?]

I would be interested in seeing what affect the smoke and ash of the wildfires out west have on temperatures. On one hand you have a tremendous amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere and on the other there’s all the reflective surface of the atmospheric dust sending sunlight back to space.

No comments: