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| Walls of the long-since-collapsed Toba volcano on Sumatra island rise behind rice fields. Photograph by Paul Kennedy, Lonely Planet/Getty Images |
Supervolcano
Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia is one of Earth’s largest volcanic events seen in
the last 2 million years. As I learned in class the past few weeks, Toba’s
explosion was about 5,000 times greater than that of Mount St. Helen’s and is
also the equivalent to 560 Mount Pinatubo eruptions. Along with this, it has
been said that Toba may have nearly driven the human race to extinction due to
climate change. However, a recent study released by scientists suggests that
Toba’s fallout may have not been quite as catastrophic as recently believed.
This study was based off of research
done on acid rain-tainted ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland. In this study,
scientists found that in respect to climate change, the Antarctic ice core
shows signs of a warming event just following the Toba eruption. According to
Andres Svensson, co-author of this study, “That means there's no long-term global cooling caused by the eruption, if there had
been, you'd expect to see evidence of a chill at both Poles.” Svensson also
stated that there may have been a shorter cooling period (10-20 years) like the
ones we see from less powerful volcanoes, but other than that life seemed to
move on after the eruption of Toba. Though this may be true in some aspects,
researchers still say this obviously depended on where humans were located in
regards to Toba. With the results of the new ice core data, researchers will
have a better chance at ancient toll of this eruption, to determine whether artifacts date from pre- or post-Toba times.
Svensson
ended this interview by stating, “It’s unlikely we'll see such a mega-eruption
any time soon. It's a very low risk," thank goodness for that.
For more information on this study and related stories, visit the following links:
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