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| Ancient Pacific Northwest Eruption Caused Global Climate Changes – Blocking Out Sun, Cooled Planet
WSU researchers document one of planet's largest volcanic eruptions Gases from Inland Northwest blocked out sun, cooling planet Washington State University researchers have determined that the Pacific Northwest was home to one of the Earth's largest known volcanic eruptions, a millennia-long spewing of sulfuric gas that blocked out the sun and cooled the planet. Only two other eruptions - the basalt floods of the Siberian Traps and the Deccan Traps - were larger, and they led to two of the Earth's great extinctions. "This would have been devastating regionally because of the acid-rain effect from the eruptions," said John Wolff, a professor in the WSU School of the Environment. "It did have a global effect on temperatures, but not drastic enough to start killing things, or it did not kill enough of them to affect the fossil record." The research, which was funded by the National Science Foundation, appears in Geology, the top journal in the field. Starting 16.5 million years ago, they