Unique among animals, humans survive not by superb physical adaptation to our environment, but rather by intelligent, large-scale adaptation of the environment to our needs. We build houses with climate control systems that mimic the environment of sub-Saharan Africa. We safely live in environments where the temperature never rises above freezing and where the level of the sea is higher than th...

An energy-balance numerical climate model was used to simulate the effects of the Mount St. Helens volcanic eruption of 18 May 1980. The resulting surface temperature depression is a maximum of 0.1 degrees C in the winter in the polar region, but is an order of magnitude smaller than the observed natural variability from other effects and will therefore be undetectable.

Fine particles of ash emitted during volcanic eruptions may sporadically influence cloud properties on a regional or global scale as well as influencing the dynamics of volcanic clouds and the subsequent dispersion of volcanic aerosol and gases. It has been shown that volcanic ash can trigger ice nucleation, but ash from relatively few volcanoes has been studied for its ice nucleating ability. ...

Dated records of ice-cap growth from Arctic Canada recently suggested that a succession of strong volcanic eruptions forced an abrupt onset of the Little Ice Age between A.D. 1275 and 1300 [Miller GH, et al. (2012) Geophys Res Lett 39(2):L02708, 10.1029/2011GL050168]. Although this idea is supported by simulation experiments with general circulation models, additional support from field data ar...

The Campanian Ignimbrite (CI) volcanic eruption was the most explosive in Europe in the last 200,000 years. The event coincided with the onset of an extremely cold climatic phase known as Heinrich Event 4 (HE4) approximately 40,000 years ago. Their combined effect may have exacerbated the severity of the climate through positive feedbacks across Europe and possibly globally. The CI event is of ...

This Special Publication provides a snapshot of our understanding of volcanic processes through the use of palaeomagnetic and rock magnetic techniques. Here, we provide a context for the book, placing individual chapters within the milieu of previous work, including some magnetic techniques that were not used in the particular studies described herein. Thermoremanent magnetization is a powerful...

Miller's 1950s experiments used, besides the apparatus known in textbooks, one that generated a hot water mist in the spark flask, simulating a water vapor-rich volcanic eruption. We found the original extracts of this experiment in Miller's material and reanalyzed them. The volcanic apparatus produced a wider variety of amino acids than the classic one. Release of reduced gases in volcanic eru...

Volcanic glass is deposited with trace amounts (0.1–0.6 wt.%) of undegassed magmatic water dissolved in the glass. After deposition, meteoric water penetrates into the glass structure mostly as molecular H2O. Due to the lower dD (‰) values of non-tropical meteoric waters and the 30‰ offset between volcanic glass and environmental water during hydration, secondary water imparts lighter hydrogen ...

 Igneous Rocks form from the solidification of molten rock. Intrusive igneous rocks are composed of crystals that are large enough to be seen with the naked eye because these rocks cooled slowly, deep within the Earth thereby allowing time for the crystals to grow. In contrast, extrusive (volcanic) igneous rocks cool very quickly after they erupt from a volcano, and so are composed of microsco...

15 16 The degassing of magmatic volatiles during eruptions beneath ice sheets and glaciers, 17 as recorded by the dissolved volatile content quenched in volcanic rocks, could 18 provide powerful new constraints on former ice thicknesses in volcanic areas. As 19 volcanic rocks are readily dateable using radiometric methods, subglacial volcanoes 20 may therefore provide crucial information on the...