There are so many things to learn about climate change from Venus, touted to be Earth's sister planet. At present, Venus has as 450-degrees Celsius surface temperature, similar to that of the self-cleaning cycle of an oven, and a carbon-dioxide dominated atmosphere by 95 percent with a density 90 times that of this planet.
Venus is an extraordinary planet, completely uninhabitable, except for, probably in the clouds, about 60 kilometers above where phosphine's recent discovery may propose "floating microbial life." However, the surface is completely inhospitable.
Nonetheless, Venus possibly had a climate akin to Earth's. Based on recent climate modeling for much of Venus's history had surface temperatures similar to Earth's today.
It possibly had oceans, rains and probably, snow, may be "continents and plate tectonics," and even more theoretically, The Conversation reported, "perhaps even surface life."
Less than a billion years back, the climate intensely changed because of a runaway greenhouse impact. It can be speculated that a rigorous period of volcanism pumped adequate carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to lead to this great climate change occurrence that caused the evaporation of oceans and the water cycle's end.
Proof of Change
Master's student Sara Khawja was inspired by the said hypothesis from climate modelers to search for evidence in "Venusian rocks for this suggested climate occurrence."
Since the early 1990s, this Carleton University team of researchers, and more recently, a Siberian team from Tomsk State University, have been charting and inferring this Earth's remarkable sister planet's geological and tectonic history.
Moreover, Soviet and Venera Vega missions from previous some decades ago, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s indeed, land on Venus and capture pictures and assessed the rocks' composition before the landers failed because of the high temperature and pressure.
Nevertheless, the experts most extensive view of Venus's surface has been provided by the Magellan spacecraft of NASA in the early 1990s, which utilized radar to see through the dense cloud layer and generate detailed illustrations of over percent surface of Venus.
Earth Resemblances
To understand further how volcanism on Venus could generate change in climate, the Earth's history can be looked upon for resemblances.
Such resemblances can be found in super-eruptions such as the last one at Yellowstone that took place more than 600,000 years.
Nevertheless, such volcanism is smaller than the large igneous provinces or LIPs that take place roughly every 20 to 30 million years.
Such eruption occurrences can emit adequate carbon dioxide to result in catastrophic climate change on Earth, which includes mass extinctions.
Essentially, LIP analogues on Venus comprise individual volcanoes that are 500-kilometers across, at a maximum, extensive lava channels that reach a maximum length of 7,000 kilometers, and there are linked to rift systems too, where the crust is pulling apart, at a maximum of 10,000-kilometers length.
If the LIP-style volcanism caused the great climate occurrence on Venus, many experts then doubt if the same event could happen on Earth.
It could be imagined that a scenario millions of years ago, in the future, when multiple LIPS randomly taking place at the same time could lead Earth to having such a runaway climate change resulting in conditions like the present-day Venus.
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