Surely by now you’ve seen The Big Picture, The Boston Globe’s large-format photo blog. Pretty much every entry is worth a peek. Here’s one on recent volcanic activity.

Photo by Cyrus Read/AVO/USGS

What does this have to do with climate change? Hm. Well, volcanoes release a lot of CO2, although the amounts are insignificant in comparison to human activities. Or how about this: the climate system and atmosphere have been memorably described as a “great ocean of air,” and plumes of smoke rising from volcanoes help to reveal, in microcosm, the forces and currents at work. How’s that for relevance? Look, pretty pictures!

Photo by Image Science and Analysis Laboratory, NASA-Johnson Space Center

The series has 15 photos total. Hint: go to the page and press F11 (if you use Windows) to put the browser in full screen mode.

Tags: Atmosphere, Climate system, Photography, Volcanoes

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Comments

1. Comment by dan @ Jul 30, 2008 5 AM

when I was in college 10 yrs ago, my geology professor said that a single large volcano eruption can emit more co2 than humans do in a century. in this article you say about the opposite. do you know of any real data on this?

2. Comment by Adam Stein @ Jul 30, 2008 7 AM

Professor Google is always helpful for stuff like this.

If you prefer a more scholarly reference, the pencilnecks at the U.S. Geological Survey say that humans are responsible for 130 times as much CO2 emissions as volcanoes every year.

You might want to alert your teacher. I suppose it depends what century he was talking about, though. A single volcanic eruption maybe does release more CO2 than humans did from, say, 1600 to 1699.