Deccan Traps - Effect On Climate and Contemporary Life

Effect On Climate and Contemporary Life

The release of volcanic gases, particularly sulfur dioxide, during the formation of the traps contributed to contemporary climate change. Data points to an average fall in temperature of 2 °C in this period.

Because of its magnitude, scientists formerly speculated that the gases released during the formation of the Deccan Traps played a role in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event (also known as the K-Pg extinction), which included the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs. Sudden cooling due to sulfurous volcanic gases released by the formation of the traps and localised gas concentrations may have contributed significantly to mass extinctions. However, the current consensus among the scientific community is that the extinction was triggered by the Chicxulub impact event in Central America (which would have produced a sunlight-blocking dust cloud that killed much of the plant life and reduced global temperature, called an impact winter).

Read more about this topic:  Deccan Traps

Famous quotes containing the words effect on, effect, climate, contemporary and/or life:

    Movies are one of the bad habits that corrupted our century. Of their many sins, I offer as the worst their effect on the intellectual side of the nation. It is chiefly from that viewpoint I write of them—as an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming a cultured people.
    Ben Hecht (1893–1964)

    At the heart of the educational process lies the child. No advances in policy, no acquisition of new equipment have their desired effect unless they are in harmony with the child, unless they are fundamentally acceptable to him.
    —Central Advisory Council for Education. Children and Their Primary Schools (Plowden Report)

    The climate has been described as “ten months winter and two months mighty late in the fall.”
    —Administration in the State of Colo, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    Why is it that many contemporary male thinkers, especially men of color, repudiate the imperialist legacy of Columbus but affirm dimensions of that legacy by their refusal to repudiate patriarchy?
    bell hooks (b. c. 1955)

    You must, to get through life well, practice industry with economy, never create a debt for anything that is not absolutely necessary, and if you make a promise to pay money at a day certain, be sure to comply with it. If you do not, you lay yourself liable to have your feelings injured and your reputation destroyed with the just imputation of violating your word.
    Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)