The Last Yellowstone Blast Signal

I have read that a supervolcano, possibly Yellowstone, wiped out most of our early diversity of ancestors. I decided to test this hypothesis by looking for a signal in the time period in question.

We are now in the Holocence Interglacial geological age at the peak of the yellow graph on the very far right of this figure. If one goes to the left, backwards in time, one reaches the 640000 year mark in the Gunz (Nebraska) Glacial Period where it is alleged that the Yellowstone Supervolcano blew its top. I can see no signal suggesting such an event in the precise 640000 year mark. Looking at the CO2 story objectively, it appears that levels jumped from 190 ppm to 260 rather abruptly shortly after this time during the 625000 year mark. Could this have been due to a Super Stratovolcano. If it is then the temperature went up rather than creating a cold spell.

Rather than causing an ice age return, this time period in fact was associated with the beginning of the Aftonian 1 Interglacial. The next return to a glacial episode, a mini-ice-age if you will, happened relatively briefly during the Aftonian 1 with two spikes into the cold when CO2 dropped as low as 210 ppm. Is this mini-ice-age the weather bomb dropped by Yellowstone and could it have wiped out our early ancestors save a few? I don't know but I doubt it though it would have required major adaptations for humans. However, the Gunz glacial period would have done a better job of that I would think.

Interestingly and paradoxically, the ice age onsets seem to be associated with a global CO2 drop below 230 ppm, a level which we will never see again due to anthropogenic fossil fuel outputs. Note also the CO2 spikes preceding the warm Interglacials suggesting it is associated with warming. It now stands at over 380 ppm as I recall, a level never seen during all the past ice ages within the Late Pleistocene.

A side question suggested by all of this and I have to ask is this. CO2 is a poison to animals. At what level does it start to affect them. Come on you physiologists, give us the goods on this? The fact that we now issue air quality alerts in big cities is proof that we are being affected, especially those with health conditions like asthma, emphysema and bronchitis.

Another interesting thing to note is that onset of glacial periods is usually sudden and very very regular which leads me to suspect that we were headed eventually for another ice age until the industrial age ascendency. Because of our greenhouse gas emissions, it is unlikely that we will ever see another ice age during the time of humans on earth. Very long term trends involving millions of years that I have looked at suggested that earth was headed naturally eventually for another long very hot spell.

I have been unable to find a precise coinciding signal of a supervolcano in the CO2/ice-age  record  which corroborates the hypothesis that the Yellowstone Stratovolcano wiped out early human diversity though there are several small drops in CO2 during the Aftonian I that look suspicious but are not at the right time. It appears that the hypothesis has to be rejected on the basis of this evidence, the accuracy of which I cannot verify. The most likely candidate signal disagrees completely with a nuclear type winter and instead argues that the ice age came to an abrupt end due to a huge influx of CO2 into the atmosphere, possibly due to this volcano. I propose the hypothesis that during an ice age, a large stratovolcano will instead of producing nuclear winter scenarios, will cause the ice age to end abruptly by its enormous discharge of greenhouse gases and the particulates when settled, will in fact heat the ice by absorption rather than reflect solar rays. It may work its cooling effect by reducing the intensity of the heating during the ensuing interglacial. 

This graph shows most importantly that human survival has been severely challenged by extreme climate changes many times and will in all likelihood, continue to be challenged in the future. The silly notion of 'stable climate' upon which we hang our hats is wrong and misleading and myopic to say the least.

Jormawankenobe

Copyright 2008 J. Jyrkkanen. All except chart.