How did volcanism trigger climate change before the eruptions started?

Enlarge / Loads of lava: Kasbohm with a few solidified lava flows of the Columbia River Basalts. (credit: Joshua Murray)

As our climate warms beyond its historical range, scientists increasingly need to study climates deeper in the planet’s past to get information about our future. One object of study is a warming event known as the Miocene Climate Optimum (MCO) from about 17 to 15 million years ago. It coincided with floods of basalt lava that covered a large area of the Northwestern US, creating what are called the “Columbia River Basalts.” This timing suggests that volcanic CO₂ was the cause of the warming.

Those eruptions were the most recent example of a “Large Igneous Province,” a phenomenon that has repeatedly triggered climate upheavals and mass extinctions throughout Earth’s past. The Miocene version was relatively benign; it saw CO₂ levels and global temperatures rise, causing ecosystem changes and significant melting of Antarctic ice, but didn’t trigger a mass extinction.

A paper just published in Geology, led by Jennifer Kasbohm of the Carnegie Science’s Earth and Planets Laboratory, upends the idea that the eruptions triggered the warming while still blaming them for the peak climate warmth.