PBS Terra warns 'There's Something MUCH Bigger Than Yellowstone. And It Will Happen Again.'

Today's evergreen educational entry features PBS Terra warning There's Something MUCH Bigger Than Yellowstone. And It Will Happen Again.

Yellowstone was massive. Roughly a thousand times larger than the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, the biggest eruption in the history of the continental United States. And if Yellowstone erupted again, the consequences for the U.S. and the world would be devastating. But there’s something far bigger than Yellowstone. Something so powerful it’s been linked to nearly every mass extinction in Earth’s history. And astonishingly, most people have never heard of it.

In this episode of Weathered, we explore the true giants of Earth’s volcanic past: the Large Igneous Provinces (LIPs). These vast flood basalt events dwarf supervolcanoes, pouring out millions of cubic kilometers of lava, filling entire regions thousands of feet thick, and unleashing pulses of greenhouse gases that have repeatedly driven abrupt climate change and global die-offs.

Along the way, we investigate what a modern Yellowstone eruption would actually look like, how ash, cooling, and atmospheric disruption would cascade across the world, and what ancient climate catastrophes can teach us about the rapid warming we’re causing now.

I think I've only mentioned Yellowstone in the context of its volcanic activity once before on this blog in NOVA warns of 'The Next Pompeii' for the Ides of March, and that was only in passing as one of the stories I tell my students about volcanic calderas. On the one hand, that's surprising, as the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano would be a civilization-ending event. On the other, it's not, as the possibility is remote; it's likely tens of thousands of years away. Humanity has more pressing threats to worry about.

One of those threats is climate change, the subject of PBS Terra says 'We Just Crossed Our FIRST Tipping Point… And It’s NOT What You Think', and it's the subtext of today's post. Acid rain, climate change, and ozone depletion contributed to the Permian Extinction AKA The Great Dying, and all of those resulted from the formation of the Siberian Traps, the greatest LIP known. PBS Terra re-examined The Great Dying in 'Earth's Worst Mass Extinction Is Actually a Warning' for Flashback Friday on Endangered Species Day, making the subtext the text.

Maiya May also linked the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) to the eruption of another LIP, the North Atlantic Large Igneous Province. I may have heard that before, but, if so, I forgot, so I'm counting this as learning something new, which makes today a good day. It's also blogging as professional development.

Stay tuned for the Sunday entertainment feature. More GRAMMY nominees, anyone?