Transcript Carbon Dioxide & Lake Nios

Carbon Dioxide
So what’s the problem? It can’t be
THAT bad!
Unless you lived around Lake Nios,
Cameroon in August 1986…
BACKGROUND
•Volcanoes release more than 130 to 230
million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every
year.
•Humans add CO2 at the rate of
approximately 22 billion tons per year (150
times the rate of volcanic production)
•Human CO2 production is equal to that if
17,000 volcanoes like Kilauea were erupting
every year.
Mammoth
Mountain is a
relatively young
volcano that is
emitting large
volumes of CO2.
Gas concentrations in the
soil in some areas near
the mountain are high
enough to kill trees and
small animals.
•If the air that we breath has more than 10%
CO2 it becomes deadly because it displaces the
Oxygen that we need for respiration.
•Lake Nios, Cameroon, is a very deep lake within
a volcanic crater.
•The lake is so deep that hydrostatic pressure
forces CO2 to remain at the lake bottom.
•When the pressure of the CO2 exceeds a
certain limit the gas rapidly bubbles up out of
the lake and flows as an invisible gas cloud
down the adjacent slopes.
•On August 61, 1986 such a gas release flowed
19 km suffocating 1,700 people along its route.
Lake Nios 10 days
after the 1986
eruption
The fountain in
the background
lifts CO2 up to the
surface so that it
no longer
accumulates.