Measured carbon dioxide emissions from Oldoinyo Lengai and the skewed distribution of passive volcanic fluxes

Susan Louise Brantley, K. W. Koepenick

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

111 Scopus citations

Abstract

Airborne measurements of CO 2 released from Oldoinyo Lengai, the only carbonatite-erupting volcano in the world, reveal a CO 2 flux of 0.055 × 10 12 mol/yr. This flux is substantially smaller than that of Mount Etna. It is proposed and that the subaerial flux distribution may be a power-law distribution (fractal) rather than Gaussian. Although rigorous testing of the power-law nature of the flux distribution is impossible, the skewed nature of the distribution and low value of the power-law exponent suggest that simultaneous measurement of the 20 largest-flux volcanoes could yield an accurate assessment of the volcanic CO 2 flux. Normalizing the emission flux by scaling per unit crater area to investigate the extension of the power-law behavior to geothermal areas with lower gas fluxes yields a power-law exponent of ~1 and predicts a subaerial volcanic-metamorphic CO 2 flux of 6 × 10 12 mol/yr. -from Authors

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)933-936
Number of pages4
JournalGeology
Volume23
Issue number10
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 1 1995

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Geology

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Measured carbon dioxide emissions from Oldoinyo Lengai and the skewed distribution of passive volcanic fluxes'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this