Experiences with smaller eruptions are “scaled up” to assess impacts of larger events--but there are big problems unresolved....

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Although Pinatubo’s 1991 eruption was large enough to cause a detectable three year global surface temperature decrease, it erupted far less than one percent of the volume of a Yellowstone eruption. It is challenging to try to scale the global impact by orders of magnitude from the rather weak global effects of Pinatubo.

Pinatubo

12 June 1991

USGS   Dave Harlow

Pinatubo Crater