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May 24, 2018




Fissures have been opening in Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano this month, forcing hundreds from their homes, spewing lava 300 feet into the air, and generating images straight out of a late-90s action movie. A few days ago, the Big Island’s most active volcano was the subject of a NBC MACH video entitled “What the Mt. Kilauea eruptions mean for climate change”.

Volcanic eruptions can have an impact on the global climate. For example, Mt. Pinatubo’s massive eruption in 2001, referenced in the NBC video, cooled average global temperatures by 1°F over 15 months. The eruption spewed 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, which blocked solar radiation.

So what’s the issue with this video? Well, as multiple scientists helpfully pointed out on Twitter, the science  in the video is less solid than hot, molten lava. Though NBC quotes one volcanologist, the relationship between the volcanic impacts he cites and climate science are a bit fissured.


First, the video says that volcanoes emit CFCs, which deplete the ozone layer and cause warming. It also claims that rapid global warming since 2014 could have been caused by the eruption of the Bardarbunga volcano in Iceland (with no real explanation for this conclusion).

There are a bunch of issues here, which Gavin Schmidt breaks down in one tweet:

֍ - Neither Kilauea nor Bardarbunga are/were emitting any SO2 or HCl into the stratosphere

֍ - There are no CFCs involved at all

֍ - Neither had any impact on stratospheric ozone

֍ - Even if they had, the resulting ozone depletion would cause a slight *cooling*! 👀

Andrew Dessler puts it even more simply: “So much in that video piece was wrong. It would have been great if they'd done some basic fact checking before producing it.”

But since they didn’t, perhaps this video is best left unwatched, and instead flushed down the lava-tory.