The delivery of volcanogenic sulphur into the upper atmosphere by explosive eruptions is known to cause significant temporary climate cooling. Therefore, phreatomagmatic and phreatoplinian eruptions occurring during the final rifting stages of active flood basalt provinces provide a potent mechanism for triggering climate change.
During the early Eocene, the northeast Atlantic margin was subjected to repeated ashfall for 0.5 m.y. This was the result of extensive phreatomagmatic activity along 3000 km of the opening northeast Atlantic rift. These widespread, predominantly basaltic ashes are now preserved in marine sediments of the Balder Formation and its equivalents, and occur over an area extending from the Faroe Islands to Denmark and southern England. These ash-bearing sediments also contain pollen and spore floras derived from low diversity forests that grew in cooler, drier climates than were experienced either before or after these highly explosive eruptions. In addition, coeval plant macrofossil evidence from the Bighorn Basin, Wyoming, USA, also shows a comparable pattern of vegetation change. The coincidence of the ashes and cooler climate pollen and spore floras in northwest Europe identifies volcanism as the primary cause of climate cooling. Estimates show that whilst relatively few phreatomagmatic eruptive centres along the 3000 km opening rift system could readily generate 0.5–1 °C cooling, on an annual basis, only persistent or repeated volcanic phases would have been able to achieve the long-term cooling effect observed in the floral record. We propose that the cumulative effect of repeated Balder Formation eruptions initiated a biodiversity crisis in the northeast Atlantic margin forests. Only the decline of this persistent volcanic activity, and the subsequent climatic warming at the start of the Eocene Thermal Maximum allowed the growth of subtropical forests to develop across the region. 相似文献
Wind power has become one of the fastest growing renewable energy. With the large-scale deployment of wind farms in the world, people have started to pay attention to the impact of wind farms on the ecological environment and climate. This paper summarized the impact of wind farms on climate and ecological environment by investigating relevant literature: In the areas of wind farms, on the one hand, the set-up of wind turbines changes original aerodynamic roughness height and strengthens the dragging of the land surface against turbulence, directly affecting the turbulent motion of the boundary layer, resulting in the changes of intensity and pattern of material energy and water vapor exchange between land surface and near-surface atmosphere, further affecting the atmospheric circulation and climate. On the other hand, wind turbines convert the majority of the wind kinetic energy into electric energy, which produces the wake effect of the wind turbine. The budget patterns and spatial and temporal distribution of large-scale kinetic energy in the boundary layer are changed correspondingly, generating changes in various fluxes (heat flux, water vapor flux, etc.) in the atmosphere, which affect temperature, precipitation, and wind speed. Generally, the warming or cooling effect of wind farms on the near-surface is related to the stability of atmosphere. However, simulations in the global climate model showed that the average impact of wind farms on global climate is small, much smaller than the expected changes in greenhouse gas emissions and the interannual changes in natural climate.Wind power emits almost no carbon dioxide and pollutants. Compared with other traditional energy sources, it reduces water consumption but may generate some negative ecological impacts such as animal habitats, bird collisions, and noise, vision impact. However, some measures can be taken to mitigate these adverse effects. 相似文献
