Study Finds Previously Unknown Giant Volcanic Eruptions In Recent History

when it comes to dramatic climatic changes on our planet volcanoes have always been the biggest contributors often changing the aerosol concentration in the atmosphere which would then reduce the temperature on the planet by at least half a degree for several years but when it comes to powerful volcanic eruptions we don't really know much about them in terms of historical events mostly because trying to understand how many times the climate on the planet was changed because of the volcanoes or because of something else has always been somewhat difficult and has always presented quite a lot of problems but that's i guess until now hello wonderful person this is anton and today we're going to be discussing this new paper that was able to discover quite a lot of extremely powerful volcanoes that happened in the last 60 thousand years on planet earth many of which have never been seen before and many of which most likely changed the climate of the planet to some extent and so let's discuss this discovery in a little bit more detail but i guess let's start with some of the most recent detections of volcanic eruptions that we know influenced the planet as a matter of fact this year 2022 started with one the eruption of the volcano in tonga the eruption that was so powerful that it sent different shockwaves across the planet that traveled the planet several times and the eruption that we discussed in one of the previous videos and that we think is going to influence the temperature on the planet at least to some extent but we'll talk more about this eruption in one of the future videos this was not even that powerful compared to something else compared to the eruption of krokatoa in 1883 that became one of the most catastrophic eruptions of recent times resulting in nearly 37 000 people dead and huge tsunami waves that traveled across the entire planet and just like the eruption in tonga this wasn't a single event this was actually several different explosions with the third explosion being the loudest sound produced in recent times according to some of the recent discoveries at a distance of about 60 kilometers away from the volcano the volume here was about 180 decibel which was loud enough to be heard several thousand kilometers away and loud enough to not just rupture the ears of anyone within a few kilometers away from the eruption but to even produce a pressure wave that would blow out the alveoli in a typical lung so by being within about 10 kilometers away from the eruption everyone who lived on the nearby island unfortunately perished with some of the sailors on a ship 60 kilometers away from there also experiencing ruptured ears and following the eruption for roughly around five years the overall temperature on the planet decreased by around 1.2 degrees mostly due to the large amounts of sulfur dioxide released as a gas into the stratosphere with sulfuric acid also being responsible for some of the lowering of the temperature and all these aerosols also affected the clouds increasing the reflectivity of the clouds in the upper atmosphere which then causes the global temperature to decrease for at least a few years and so at least a few really powerful blizzards were reported in the years after the eruption although none of them were dramatic enough to affect the harvest something else happened earlier in that century that did actually produce a much more powerful eruption in 1815 a little bit to the east there was another much more powerful eruption known as tambora the eruption that produced the caldera that you see right here and this particular eruption was dramatically more powerful resulting in at least twice as many casualties and reducing the temperatures around the planet even more as a matter of fact the eruption of 1815 resulted in what's known as the year without summer the strange year that resulted in a lot of famine around the planet resulted in some of the strangest weather on the planet and today this particular eruption is considered to be the largest one in the recorded human history at least in the last few thousand years scoring the impressive seven on the so-called volcanic explosivity index which usually determines how powerful and how influential a volcanic eruption would be with krakatoa scoring a six and the most recent eruption of the mount pinatubo in the philippines also scoring a six as well with several other volcanoes scoring a seven happening hundreds and hundreds of years ago there was a mysterious volcanic eruption in 1400s in vanuatu another eruption in indonesia in 1200s a korean eruption in the 10th century and an eruption in new zealand in the year 181 and generally it's believed that these eruptions happen at least once per 100 or 200 years but that's the so-called sevens what about aids well when it comes to the most powerful eruptions the eights up until a few months ago there was really only one known the so-called toba eruption with this beautiful lake tobo that you see right here forming the caldera and once again this happened in sumatra indonesia and it happened approximately 74 000 years ago and this is of course the time when the ancient humans already existed and already were slowly propagating across the planet including the regions in indonesia but interesting enough when some of the scientists studied some of the genes of modern humans they discovered that around the same time there was an unusual and sudden decrease of total number of humans on the planet at some point there were only about 20 000 people left and today this is known as the bottleneck theory with the most common explanation being the toba catastrophe here the idea is really simple this tremendously powerful volcanic eruption caused so much destruction on the planet that it almost entirely caused our species to go extinct but the thing is some of the recent studies such as the one that you can find in the description below argue against this because they've also discovered that in certain regions of india nothing seemed to have changed for some of the humans living in those areas their numbers did not increase by much and their actual lifestyle did not change either and in this case they took a look at quite a lot of different locations on the planet discovering that for the most part humans were doing okay so the numbers could have actually decreased for some other reason as well nevertheless such a powerful eruption would very likely cause a volcanic winter lasting 6 to 10 years and would also lower the average temperature on the planet for at least a thousand year period afterwards but because back then humans were hunter-gatherers it might have actually not affected them as much although the actual details of the effects and what exactly happened to early humans is not something we can answer right now but there is one thing we can answer we can actually find more of these eruptions using some of the modern techniques and that's precisely what the scientists behind the recent paper decided to do they decided to study sound the ice course discovering signs of thousands of different volcanoes that happened in that period in this case using the chorus from antarctica and greenland that contains some of the ancient signs of sulfuric acid the signs of which usually represent an extremely powerful and very impactful volcano much more powerful than anything we've seen in the last few hundreds of years and according to the scientists at least 85 volcanic eruptions in the last 60 000 years left visible signs of their impact with 69 volcanic eruptions very likely being more powerful than tambora eruption of 1815 with the most powerful eruptions visible in this image right here the bigger the circle the more powerful the eruption tambour in this case which was the most powerful recent eruption represents a relatively small circle yet the eruption of lake taupo in new zealand the eruption that happened many many times before was one of the most powerful in the last 30 000 years very likely being very similar to the eruption of tuba 74 000 years ago and every eruption they discovered in those ice cores is definitely much bigger and much more powerful than anything we have a record of hundreds or even thousands of times more powerful than the eruption of tambora in 1815 with their data also showing us that something extremely powerful happened 55 000 years ago as well and also shown us that pretty much most of these very powerful volcanoes dramatically affected the planet for at least five to ten years in terms of the actual climate and the top 25 eruptions on this list are bigger than anything that happened in the last 2 500 years and all this of course means one thing powerful volcanic eruptions are a lot more frequent than we originally thought and they also influenced the climate on our planet quite dramatically as well and because there hasn't really been a very powerful eruption in the modern times it's kind of difficult for us to predict or to try to understand what would happen to our civilization if such an eruption were to occur now would it actually collapse our civilization entirely that's not a question we can answer but it would definitely change a lot of things on the planet and possibly even cause a major winter for several years very likely affecting the crops around the planet but trying to predict this is still beyond our capabilities nevertheless though these studies and these investigations are extremely important in order for us to one day try to figure this out and try to create some kind of a plan of action when this type of an eruption does occur and because 2022 was such an eye-opener with this eruption kind of reminding us that it can happen at any time and it can be pretty much instant conducting even more ice core studies and then using the statistics to try to estimate the timeline for the next eruption at the moment is really the only thing we can do but i guess the other thing being a good plan of action what exactly would we actually do if suddenly there is a winter for five or maybe even 10 years on the entire planet or at least a major cool down across the planet where many crops start failing at the moment we don't really know but because of the volcanic eruptions like this one in tonga we might be able to actually come up with some kind of a mathematical analysis that could help us understand how various aerosols from these volcanoes affect the entire planet and what we can expect from something even more powerful for now we don't really know on that note check out all the links in the description below subscribe maybe share this with someone who has learned about space and sciences and maybe come back tomorrow to learn something else support this channel on patreon by uh membership or by buying the wonderful person t-shirt you can find in the description stay wonderful i'll see you tomorrow and as always bye do [Music] 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Channel: Anton Petrov

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Keywords: anton petrov, science, physics, astrophysics, astronomy, universe, whatdamath, what da math, technology, steven universe, space engine, universe sandbox 2, tonga, tonga volcano, himawari, himawari satellite, tonga volcano 2022, tonga tsunami, vesuvian eruptian, krokatoa, tonga eruption 2022, tonga eruption, 2022 Hunga Tonga, Hunga Tonga, tsunami, tsunami 2022, tonga volcano 2022 tsunami, tonga eruption update, tonga fundraiser, tonga eruption fundraiser, toba catastrophe theory, toba

Id: yAk9YrR32wo

Length: 13min 3sec (783 seconds)

Published: Sun May 15 2022