Fire melts ice, but so does ash: Dark particles settling onto white ice make the surface trap more heat, the same way wearing a black shirt on a sunny day is hotter than wearing a white shirt. And scientists have seen the connection play out in real time across Earth’s surface as volcanic eruptions have scattered ash on snow and made it melt faster. But for the first time, a team of researchers has pinpointed the phenomenon in the distant past, as they report in a new article published in the journal Nature Communications.
“The paper is the first to document that this phenomenon likely also occurred during the last deglaciation, and raises interesting questions regarding the role of volcanism on deglaciation,” James Baldini, an Earth scientist at Durham University in the U.K. not affiliated with the study wrote Newsweek in an email.
He notes that traditionally, scientists thinking about the impact of volcanoes on climate focus on tiny particles called aerosols, which are released during eruptions, form clouds that block sunlight and keep the Earth cooler. This paper, on the other hand, suggests that effect might have been balanced out by melting ice—leaving the planet no cooler than it was before.
The team used an unusual form of evidence: glacial varves, or the layers of dirt and mud deposited each year beneath a glacier. Just like the rings of new wood trees grow every year in a light-dark pattern, glaciers annually deposit first a wide lighter layer of sandier soil during the summer, then a narrower layer of darker clay during the winter. The thickness of each layer lets scientists calculate how much the glacier in question melted, since the more a glacier melts the more sediment it carries away.
He notes that traditionally, scientists thinking about the impact of volcanoes on climate focus on tiny particles called aerosols, which are released during eruptions, form clouds that block sunlight and keep the Earth cooler. This paper, on the other hand, suggests that effect might have been balanced out by melting ice—leaving the planet no cooler than it was before.
The team used an unusual form of evidence: glacial varves, or the layers of dirt and mud deposited each year beneath a glacier. Just like the rings of new wood trees grow every year in a light-dark pattern, glaciers annually deposit first a wide lighter layer of sandier soil during the summer, then a narrower layer of darker clay during the winter. The thickness of each layer lets scientists calculate how much the glacier in question melted, since the more a glacier melts the more sediment it carries away.
