It seems there’s really no complete measurements on how much CO2 is coming out of volcanoes, both active and inactive.
From Livescience: Long Invisible, Research Shows Volcanic CO2 Levels Are Staggering (Op-Ed)
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In 1992, it was thought that volcanic degassing released something like 100 million tons of CO2 each year. Around the turn of the millennium, this figure was getting closer to 200. The most recent estimate, released this February, comes from a team led by Mike Burton, of the Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology – and it’s just shy of 600 million tons. It caps a staggering trend: A six-fold increase in just two decades.
These inflating figures, I hasten to add, don’t mean that our planet is suddenly venting more CO2.
Humanity certainly is; but any changes to the volcanic background level would occur over generations, not years. The rise we’re seeing now, therefore, must have been there all along: As scientific progress is widening our perspective, the daunting outline of how little we really know about volcanoes is beginning to loom large.
Quiet monsters
The exhalations of our planet can be spectacularly obvious. The fireworks, though, are only part of the picture. We now know that the CO2 released during volcanic eruptions is almost insignificant compared with what happens after the camera crews get bored. The emissions that really matter are concealed. The silent, silvery plumes which are currently winding their way skyward above the 150 or so active volcanoes on our planet also carry with them the bulk of its carbon dioxide. Their coughing fits might catch the eye — but in between tantrums, the steady breathing of volcanoes quietly sheds upwards of a quarter of a billion tons of CO2 every year.
We think. Scientists’ best estimates, however, are based on an assumption. It might surprise you to learn that, well into the new century, of the 150 smokers I mentioned, almost 80 percent are still as mysterious, in terms of the quantity of CO2 they emit, as they were a generation ago: We’ve only actually measured 33.
If the 117 unsampled peaks follow a similar trend, then the research community’s current projection might stand. But looking through such a small window, there’s no way of knowing if what we have seen until now is typical or not. It’s like shining a light on a darkened globe: randomly, you might hit Australia, and think you’d seen it all – while on the edge of your beam, unnoticed, would be Asia. Our planet’s isolated volcanic frontiers could easily be hiding a monster or two; and with a bit of exploration, our estimate of volcanic CO2 output could rise even higher.
You’d think that would be enough. That might be my fault — I tend to save the weird stuff until the end. Recently, an enigmatic source of volcanic carbon has come to light that isn’t involved with lava — or even craters. It now seems that not only is there CO2 we can’t get to, there’s some we can’t even see.
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Even more incredibly, it even seems that some volcanoes which are considered inactive, in terms of their potential to ooze new land, can still make some serious additions to the atmosphere through diffuse CO2 release. Residual magma beneath dormant craters, though it might never reach the surface, can still ‘erupt’ gases from a distance. Amazingly, from what little scientists have measured, it looks like this process might give off as much as half the CO2 put out by fully active volcanoes.
If these additional ‘carbon-active’ volcanoes are included, the number of degassing peaks skyrockets to more than 500. Of which we’ve measured a grand total of nine percent. You can probably fill it in by now — we need to climb more mountains.
Related articles
- Long Invisible, Research Shows Volcanic CO2 Levels Are Staggering (Op-Ed) (livescience.com)
- Indonesia’s Mount Sinabung continues to erupt (abc.net.au)
- Volcano spews ash 3km high (stuff.co.nz)
Aphan: “magma “baking” the sediments and releasing the same things we release when we burn fossil/carbon/fuel ”
Well played, I hadn’t considered that at all. Though if that’s occurring in any great measure and getting itself out of the oceans, then the ratio of isotopes in the water should be trivial for settling that particular matter.
I have been wondering for a long time about the wet chemical determinations of atmospheric CO2 done in the 19th and early 20th centuries. These show strongly fluctuating CO2 levels both up and down. Sure any one individual measurement could be sloppy and in error but the trends over time are duplicated by many different researchers of high repute working in significantly different locations. The CAGW advocates accept the readings that fit with their theory (those done around the end of the 19th century) and discard all the others as flawed (with what justification?). Thats a pretty arrogant position to take without impecable justification. Is it possible that all these scientists were infact correct and maybe undersea volcanic emissions are larger than we thought, causing the fluctuations? Also of course, if the CO2 levels can fall quickly it means the lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere cannot be as long as currently claimed. Maybe its a far fetched theory (given Willis’s 4% claimed contribution from volcanoes) but then what is the justification for so glibly disregarding the work of these earlier scientists? Much of our current knowledge is based on the work of such earlier scientists and to simply dismiss this data just because it does not fit with the current politically fashionable theory to me seems dubious.
In Sweden during the 70’s, we learned in mandatory school that all vulcanos emits carbon dioxide – regardless of any state – active, dormant or dead, so it isn’t news.
Some more estimates of the number of submarine volcanoes from Oregon State;
Submarine Volcanoes; http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/book/export/html/138
quote;
If an estimate of 4,000 volcanoes per million square kilometers on the floor of the Pacific Ocean is extrapolated for all the oceans than there are more than a million submarine (underwater) volcanoes. Perhaps as many as 75,000 of these volcanoes rise over half a mile (1 kilometer) above the ocean floor. Technology and hard work by a group of tenacious explorers/geologists have allowed us our first detailed glimpses of submarine volcanoes. /
cont;
I could perhaps throw in the idea of the great Mid Ocean Ridges and Troughs where the planet’s plate tectonics is most manifest and where the earth’s crust is relatively quite thin and quite close to the hot mantle.
A lot of CO2 from tectonically buried plate rock such as the carbonate rocks are probably decomposed under the heat and pressure of the great depths back into their basic constituent elements. Which in the case of CO2 and many other plate rock constituents may again be returned to the surface in volcanic magma originating at those great depths in the mantle.
And the CO2 released from those decomposing tectonically buried carbonate surface rocks then continues to find it’s way up through magma channels from supposedly dormant or even extinct Volcanoes
A similar process might occur right along the immense lengths of the great Mid Ocean Ridges and troughs
After all what was once believed to be quite rare smoker fields found on those ridges turn out to be quite common and often square kilometres in extent.
How much CO2 is expelled from those smoker fields of which most found are supposedly extinct but like the volcanoes, might still be expelling immense amounts of CO2 in steady streams which are immediately taken up by ocean waters and probably released into the atmosphere much later, is an unknown and a complete mystery and has never been researched.
Any such CO2 emissions from the smoker fields and the great mid ocean ridges and troughs will not be known nor can they be guessed at until many more decades of ocean research starts to reveal more of the details of what lies below those oceans which cover 79% of the planet’s surface.
Today more is known about the Moon’s surface than is known about the great Deeps of the Earth’s oceans and until a great deal more is known about what lies below those oceans and what can be found on that ocean floor and in the oceans themselves, no even completely honest guess is likely to come close to the true level of the release of even a minor gas such as CO2 from the vast ocean floor and the oceans above into the atmosphere of the planet..
Have a look at these figures: http://virtualexplorer.com.au/article/2009/227/earth-co-degassing/emissions.html
Central Appennine – Chiodini et al., 2000 Non volcanic Co2 4-13.2 (12,000) Mt/y Co2 per km2
Now get your calculator and do the math.
I don’t see a problem with figuring out the total CO2 output of volcanoes, etc. You state that 33 volcanoes have been sampled. That is more than enough data. Just interpolate a la Jones to account for the remaining population of volcanoes and torture the resulting Climatology data using Mannian Statistical Data Torture Techniques(MSDTT) and voila, you get what ever answer that you desire.
More climate science, this time using the Mann-Trenberth & Jones-Hansen-Schmidt transform functions. Assume 150 under air volcanoes (although a trivial few were under water) @ur momisugly mean annual CO2 production of 4 MT times 3.5 million undersea volcanoes, yields 14,000 GT of CO2 per annum, ignoring as trivial the 150 under air volcanoes. OK, assume only 100,000 of the undersea volcanoes are comparable to the 150 land volcanoes & ignore the CO2 contribution of the other 3.4 million calculated under water volcanoes & from the 150 under air volcanoes. That gives us only 400 GT per year. Make it 10,000 undersea volcanoes comparable to the 150 based upon a sample of 33 & it’s 40 GT, again without the land contribution.
So, even with these massive reductions, the undersea volcanoes still beat the human contribution. In climate science-style extrapolation modeling, that is. I might have made some arithmetic errors, but it doesn’t matter, since I’m not using any sedimentary data upside down or relying on a single tree to dictate global energy, economic & taxation policy, as under climate science practice, I’m perfectly entitled to do. For the good of the cause. And the children. Widows are on their own.
RayG says:
November 16, 2013 at 5:42 pm
Thanks for validating my procedure. You’re one of the Team now.
But seriously, folks…
If science is almost literally clueless as to natural CO2 production, how can it estimate the capacity of sinks for the magic gas? Or how long the One True Gas deigns to linger in our atmosphere.
Climate science is not only unsettled, but deeply unsettling.
Super critical CO2? – Don’t get in a conversation with it.
Re: unicorn fences. How many unicorns per running foot are required?
milodonharlani says:
November 16, 2013 at 3:30 pm
…….for a final estimate of 3 GT of volcanic-origin CO2 per annum. Now I need some pals to review my “work
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In all my years as an Aerospace Engineer I’ve not seen as thoughtful a piece of work as this on volcanoes. 98% of my peers agree.
Luke Warmist says:
November 16, 2013 at 6:11 pm
You’re hired as staff pal reviewer for the Journal of Climate Science Grant Acquisition!
But we need to hunt down the non-conforming two percent & send them to reeducation camps.
I have never understood why we trust the CO2 readings from one volcano, Mauna Loa, which is near another volcano, Kilauea, which is an active volcano which has been spewing out lava and CO2 since 1983.
Tom Trevor says:
November 16, 2013 at 6:33 pm
Don’t forget the two new undersea volcanoes east of the Big Island, erupting as the Pacific Plate passes over the hotspot that made the existing Hawaiian Islands & the Emperor Seamounts.
hmmm. the solubility of c02 in water varies with temperature. The colder the water, the more c02 can be absorbed from the atmosphere, and the warmer the water more c02 is released. Ice, snow, rain, water-table, and sea do exist near many volcanoes and near surface magma (e.g. mammoth mountain area). I would think all c02 is released as the water temperature approaches 100C. So, i wonder it the amount of co2 outgassing from water is significant? hmmm.
The figures given for human produced CO2 v volcanic has been tosh from the beginning –
The propaganda “data” produced to fuel the global warming bankwagon is deliberate misinformation. That is simply a fact.
From: http://carbon-budget.geologist-1011.net/
“Both tectonic and volcanic CO2 are magmatic and depleted in both 13C & 14C. In the absence of statistically significant isotope determinations for each volcanic province contributing to the atmosphere, this makes CO2 contributions of volcanic origin isotopically indistinguishable from those of fossil fuel consumption. It is therefore unsurprising to find that Segalstad (1998) points out that 96% of atmospheric CO2 is isotopically indistinguishable from volcanic degassing. So much for the Royal Society’s unexplained “chemical analysis”. If you believe that we know enough about volcanic gas compositions to distinguish them chemically from fossil fuel combustion, you have indeed been mislead. As we shall see, the number of active volcanoes is unknown, never mind a tally of gas signatures belonging to every active volcano. We have barely scratched the surface and as such, there is no magic fingerprint that can distinguish between anthropogenic and volcanogenic sources of CO2.”
Mauna Loa is measuring volcanic CO2 – it cannot, and makes no attempt to, distinguish between man-made and volcanic. The station is sitting on top of the world’s biggest active volcano surrounded by active volcanoes and thousands of earthquakes a year in warm seas over a hot spot producing volcanic islands. They call it a pristine site for measuring carbon dioxide, unsullied by local production..
Callender/Keeling had an anti coal agenda, that too is a fact, and their data were made to fit this green’s agenda which was later hi-jacked by the oil/nuclear industry – the emotional energy of the greens a cheap fuel source as Maggie utilised to great effect.
garym says:
November 16, 2013 at 6:50 pm
IMO it is. Underwater volcanic eruptions naturally heat the water around them. But in any case, if submarine volcanism increases the concentration of CO2 in ocean water of average temperature, there’s more to release when the water warms, from whatever cause.
IMO natural sources & sinks of CO2 have been greatly underestimated. The study presented in this blog post is a step in the right direction, but still overlooks many, perhaps most terrestrial volcanic sources of CO2 & the majority of them under water.
Consider what defensibly could be the case on the high end, or maybe not all that high. Assume, from observation, around 600 “volcanoes” active & inactive but still emitting CO2 on land, rather than the 150 active volcanoes assumed in the study. Add in the volcanic processes that produce CO2 in the absence of identifiable “volcanoes”. IMO there’s no reason why the land could not be releasing a gigaton of CO2 per year on average for the Holocene or even the past century.
Now if the 140 million square miles IIRC of ocean floor is just as volcanic as the land, that means over three gigatons per year. The fact is, as the paper’s authors acknowledge, we really do not know how volcanic the seafloor is. Without entering the realm of science fiction, it might arguably be twice as volcanic & gaseous, so that annual global emissions approach five GT. What if we’ve missed so much terrestrial volcanism that the land generates two GT per year? Why not? It’s certainly possible. Then if oceanic crust is twice as productive as continental, we’re looking at 10 GT total per year. It’s probably less than that & even less than half that, but really, who knows?
The fact is that science doesn’t know. Why not spend research funds on trying to find out the answers to questions like these instead of financing yet more alarming, absurd GIGO GCMs, ie doing genuine science instead of rent-seeking, ideologically driven hoaxing?
Only the Central Apenine area = 1200 km2 x 4 -13,4 Mt CO2 per year per km2 = an average of 8,7 Mt per km2 x 1200 = 10.440 Mt of non volcano related Co2 Emissions per year.
And this is only a relative small area of italy which totals around 300.000 km2.
Why not spend research funds, including stripping the billion dollars a day world wide spent on subsidies to the despicable scammers of the renewable energy industry and other so called CO2 emmission mitagation creations and spend that money on Ocean and land research per se.
Forget and recognise the minor role of CO2 in the atmosphere [ although playing a critical role in the biosphere ] and the attempts to use it as a primary aim of any research and let it just take it’s non important place in ocean and land research projects along with all the other factors to be researched and considered
R. de Haan says: November 16, 2013 at 7:26 pm
“Only the Central Apenine area = 1200 km2 x 4 -13,4 Mt CO2 per year per km2 = an average of 8,7 Mt per km2 x 1200 = 10.440 Mt of non volcano related Co2 Emissions per year.”
No, the Appenines are not emitting 10 Gtons of CO2/year. It nowhere says that 4-13.4 has units Mt/yr/km2. It says the units are Mt/yr. That’s the total for that site. 12000 is the area.
You really ought to try sanity checks here. Scientists do not announce major gas effluxes in a line in the middle of a table.
vukcevic November 16, 2013 at 3:36 pm says:
“….Most of current global warming is concentrated in the Arctic area. There is a magmatic fissure all across Arctic, but quantities of either lava or CO2 discharges is not known….”
You can assume that quantities of lava or CO2 discharges in the Arctic are no different than those in other oceans. Your observation of Arctic warming is correct – the Arctic is actually the only part of the world that is still warming. The globe as a whole has experienced a cessation of warming for the last 15 years. The observed Arctic warming is not greenhouse warming and is not related to any stealth undersea volcanic action. It is caused by warm Gulf Stream water carried into the Arctic Ocean by North Atlantic currents. It started suddenly at the turn of the twentieth century, paused for thirty years in mid-century, then resumed, and is still going strong. Prior to that there was nothing but two thousand years of slow, linear cooling in the Arctic. Checking carbon dioxide history, there was no increase of atmospheric CO2 when the warming began which rules out carbon dioxide as the cause. The thirty year warming pause in mid-century was an actual cooling at the rate of 0.3 degrees per decade. This also is quite impossible for the greenhouse effect to accomplish.
Nope! Scientists announce it in press releases whose content bears little comparison to the later paper.
The next grant application is assured if that press release is taken up by the MSM and given wide coverage.
Nobody but scientists read the later released actual paper. [ as well now an increasing number of skeptics! ]
thingadonta says:
November 16, 2013 at 4:59 pm
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They can’t tax volcanoes either.
Nick Stokes says:
November 16, 2013 at 7:33 pm
By correcting for the Mosher-Stokes GHG Amplification Theorem, I’ve discovered that man-made annual atmospheric CO2 contribution is really only 13 GT rather than 33 GT, which comports well with my prior Mann-Trenberth & Jones-Hansen-Schmidt & more advanced Cook-Lewandowsky transform function-derived estimates of volcanic-origin CO2 in the range of 10 to 15,000 GT.
Just kidding, as I hope is obvious.
During the last ice age, Japan was almost uninhabitable due to seismic activity and volcanic eruptions. However there was a land bridge present between Korea (I think) and the present Islands of Japan. But having a land bridge may have affected the tectonic plates movements. I am worried about Baby Krakatoa and Vesuvius. All around that part of the Med, there are numerous undersea vents and activity especially the ancient terrestrial Firey fields that still attract the tourists because of their sulphur bubbling baths and spas. Ancient Romans used them too as health resorts. Vesuvius is murmuring again. Interestingly, the last lava eruption not a Plinian eruption e.g., Pompeii 79 AD., was in 1944. And since the 79 AD disaster, there have been quite a few bad eruptions. Who would be mad enough to live there or in Naples. They can’t ensure their properties either I learned from an Italian.