Magnitude and consequences of volatile release from the Siberian Traps

The eruption of the Siberian Traps flood basalts has been invoked as a trigger for the catastrophic end-Permian mass extinction. Quantitative constraints on volatile degassing are critical to understanding the environmental consequences of volcanism. We measured sulfur, chlorine, and fluorine in melt inclusions from the Siberian Traps and found that concentrations of these volatiles in some magmas were anomalously high compared to other...