Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Of or pertaining to a supervolcano.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

super- +‎ volcanic

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word supervolcanic.

Examples

  • And I think the setting in The Road is post-volcanic or post-supervolcanic, because some of the stories I'm working on are in a similar setting and The Road featured the unmistakable hardened slag on things like highways, and burned away trees, and smoking hot springs, etc.

    Is It Science Fiction: The Road by Cormac McCarthy 2007

  • One possible cause for this was a catastrophic supervolcanic event some 75,000 years ago, which may have reduced our own species to as few as a thousand breeding pairs and helped to wipe out all human branches except for h. sapiens and h. neandertalis.

    On the Relative Lack of Genetic Diversity in our Species. | Mind on Fire 2009

  • This webpage by Ken Wohlenz of Las Alamos National Laboratory hypothesizes that there was a supervolcanic caldera of which Krakatoa was a part, which erupted around 535 CE.

    Juckes and the Indigirka River Alter Ego « Climate Audit 2006

  • The alternative is a supervolcanic eruption also called a superplinian or hyperplinian eruption.

    Juckes and the Indigirka River Alter Ego « Climate Audit 2006

  • Some of the volcanoes are notable for their eruptions, for instance, Krakatau for its global effects in 1883, Lake Toba for its supervolcanic eruption estimated to have occurred 74,000 Before Present which was responsible for six years of volcanic winter, and Mount Tambora for the most violent eruption in recorded history in 1815.

    Propeller Most Popular Stories 2010

  • The risks associated with catastrophes such as asteroidal/cometary impacts, supervolcanic episodes, and explosions of supernovae/gamma-ray bursts are based on their observed frequencies.

    Ethical Technology 2010

  • "Previous supervolcanic eruptions have been linked to mass extinction events, such as the Permian extinction 250 million years ago - which wiped out more than 90 per cent of marine species and roughly coincided with the Siberian Traps eruption, the largest in history."

    Original Signal - Transmitting Digg 2010

  • "Previous supervolcanic eruptions have been linked to mass extinction events, such as the Permian extinction 250 million years ago - which wiped out more than 90 per cent of marine species and roughly coincided with the Siberian Traps eruption, the largest in history."

    Original Signal - Transmitting Digg 2010

  • The theory - first proposed by Stanley H. Ambrose of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1998 - holds that the supervolcanic event at Lake Toba intensified Earth's last ice age by releasing so much ash into the atmosphere that sunlight was blocked out for six years.

    unknown title 2009

  • Although humans survived the event, researchers have detected increasing activity underneath a caldera at Yellowstone National Park, where some suspect another supervolcanic eruption will eventually take place.

    AOL News 2009

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • Comparatively speaking, extra-terrestrial impacts are orders of magnitude less frequent than supervolcanic eruptions.

    --Arysio Nunes dos Santos, 2005, Atlantic, The Lost Continent Finally Found

    February 5, 2008