67 Long- and Short-Term Environmental Consequences of Large Igneous Provinces Throughout Earth’s History (Posters)

We invite submissions to an interdisciplinary session on Large Igneous Provinces (LIPs), exploring their environmental impacts using geochronology, paleomagnetism, geochemistry, paleoenvironmental proxies, and modeling to integrate diverse data into understanding LIP-induced environmental changes.

Sunday, 19 October 2025
8:00 AM - 5:30 PM
HBGCC, Hall 1

Long-Term Sulfur Effects in Multiple-Eruption LIP Models: Assessing How Eruptive Tempo Shapes the Marine Carbon Cycle

Paper number: 67-3
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 8:00 AM – 8:00 AM

Authors

Abstract

Large Igneous Provinces (LIPs) release both carbon and sulfur, producing coupled radiative and geochemical forcings that are not simply additive. Recently, several studies have conceptually highlighted the significant impact of repeated volcanic “winters” on ecosystems. However, it remains unclear how eruptive tempo mechanistically influences the marine carbon cycle with both carbon and sulfur feedbacks. In our recent work (Cheong et al., 2025), we used a modified LOSCAR (Long-term Ocean-atmosphere-Sediment CArbon cycle Reservoir) model that incorporates sulfate aerosol driven cooling and sulfur’s effect on ocean alkalinity to assess how volatile composition and eruptive tempo jointly shape climate and the marine carbon system. We demonstrated that volcanic sulfur emissions from a single LIP-scale eruption lead to marine carbon cycle feedbacks that persist beyond the LIP eruptive interval. Thus, contrary to previous assumptions, the sulfur-driven feedbacks at sub-10kyr scales can strongly affect the net environmental carbon and sulfur impacts of LIP eruptions, especially the spatio-temporal pattern of carbonate compensation depth (CCD) and pH changes. Building on these single eruption results, we present results for multiple eruption scenarios that more realistically represent LIP events with 10s to 100s of individual eruptive events. Overall, we find that, similar to the single eruption model, volcanic sulfur effects are not simply additive to those of carbon emissions, and that successive eruptions typically enhance the non-linear responses. Furthermore varying the eruption interval from ~10² to ~10³ years produces distinct regimes: ~10²-year pacing pushes the system into a new climatic state (especially in the deep ocean), while ~10³-year pacing yields strong fluctuations. We present results varying volatile flux, duration, interval, and number of eruptions to help map the potential parameter space for LIPs. Our model results help highlight the importance of constraining the eruptive tempo at sub-10kyr timescales as well as the ways to interpret variability recorded in various paleo-proxy records (e.g., temperature, δ13C, CCD) in terms of volcanic forcings. Our results provide novel insights into how LIPs with diverse eruptive tempos may affect biology/ecosystems by producing different amplitudes and scales of climate variability.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 57, No. 6

doi: 10.1130/abs/2025AM-414156

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