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Unfortunately there are very few models to test what that amount of sulfur dioxide would do to Earth at that time, he said. What's generally known is that unlike carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide reflects sunlight back into space and is considered a climate cooler. But, whereas carbon dioxide can survive for centuries in the atmosphere, sulfur dioxide is washed out in a matter of months and years. So the cooling effect lasts only a little longer than the eruption. Still to be evaluated are the effects of other gases released from the huge eruptions. Chlorine and other "halogen" gases like fluorine and bromine are released by lavas, but usually play minor roles in modern-day volcanic eruptions. "Yet, given the colossal amounts of magma erupted, the amount of halogens delivered to the atmosphere may have been dramatic as well," suggests Bruno Scaillet of France's Université d'Orléans. Nor it is clear that what was learned about gas releases from the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines is much help, according to Scaillet. Despite being the largest eruption studied by modern science, it was an entirely different sort of volcano. What's more, it was on the order of a 1000 times smaller than the Deccan eruptions, he writes in a separate report in the same issue of Science.
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