36,000 gigatons of carbon heralded history’s biggest mass extinction

Enlarge / Some of the massive volcanic deposits that are part of the Siberian Traps. (credit: MIT)

The end-Permian mass extinction was a big deal. It was the largest mass extinction event ever and occurred 252 million years ago. A whopping 90 percent of all marine species and around 70 percent of their terrestrial kin were killed off.

Over the years, there have been numerous efforts to look into this massive, world-changing event. The end-Permian mass extinction was coincident with mass eruptions in the Siberian Traps, and some potential scenarios include volcanism driving acid rain, volcanism triggering the burning of coal (which released greenhouses gases into the atmosphere), and a reduction in the availability of oxygen in the ocean, among others. However, a new paper relies on previously unused data and modeling to dig into the matter.

In all, the study found that 36,000 gigatons of carbon-mostly from volcanic sources-were released into the atmosphere over a relatively short span of 15,000 years. This period also saw the global average temperature rise a staggering amount, from 25C to 40C. While researchers previously explored volcanism and carbon as potential causes for the massive extinction, this work provides more insight into the event, said Wolfram Kurschner, a geologist at the University of Oslo and one of the authors of the paper.

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