The Impact Of Novarupta

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On the morning of June 6th, 1912, the ground of the southern Alaskan peninsula began to shake with extreme force. This force, when later analyzed turned out to be the most powerful volcanic eruption of the 20th century. This newly formed caldera volcano later known, as Novarupta, literally translated as “new eruption”, is located in Katmai National Park and Reserve on the Alaskan Aleutian Range (Pidwirny and Jones 2009). Novarupta’s eruption caused immediate impacts to the native Alaskan climate as well as impacts to earth’s global climate overall. Volcanoes can leave enormous impacts locally to geography and ecosystems, but because of Novarupta’s status as the strongest volcanic eruption in Alaska’s recorded history, Novarupta left local as well as global impacts on earth’s climate. The Novarupta volcano eruption negatively impacted global climate by expelling a wide aerosol/dust veil of volcanic ash that decreased global temperature significantly, releasing oxides into the atmosphere, and triggering numerous earthquakes after the initial eruption. Large eruptions like Novarupta 's can have a significant impact upon global
More earthquakes can also cause more geological damage as well as increased loss of life. According to Klemetti Erik, an author for wired.com and an assistant professor of Geosciences at Denison University, “there were at least 14 earthquakes triggered during or after Novarupta’s eruption of a magnitude of 6 or greater occurred, releasing 250 times more energy than the earthquakes at Pinatubo in 1991. This is thought to reflect the lack of pre-existing faults from previous calderas in the location where the new caldera formed at Katmai”(Klemetti 2012). Earthquakes triggered by volcanoes are not very uncommon, but due to the scale of Novarupta, the numerous earthquakes triggered were also at a proportionally large

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