Subject: Volcanoes: emit 3x more CO2 than thought
...a rather interesting finding:

https://wattsupwiththat.com/20...

Manchester’s Volcanic CO2 Bombshell might be a game changer. The Manchester team, led by Alexander Riddell, deployed cutting-edge sensors on a helicopter to measure emissions from the Soufrière Hills Volcano in Montserrat. Published in Science Advances DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.ads8864, their findings are a wake-up call. Traditional monitoring focused on hot volcanic vents (fumaroles) that spew easily detectable gases like sulfur dioxide (SO2). But cooler, water-rich hydrothermal systems absorb acidic gases, masking significant CO2 output. The new tech revealed that Soufrière Hills emits three times more CO2 than earlier estimates suggested.

Riddell notes, “Volcanoes play a crucial role in the Earth’s carbon cycle,” but he’s quick to downplay the impact, claiming volcanoes contribute less than 5% of global CO2 compared to human activities like fossil fuel burning. Fair enough, but if one volcano’s emissions are underestimated by a factor of three, what about the thousands of others worldwide? The study hints at a broader issue: our volcanic CO2 estimates could be way off, especially for volcanoes with similar hydrothermal systems.