The Planet Cracks Open: The Siberian Traps Eruption

By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News

Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — February 24, 2026

The Great Dying did not begin with a single explosion or a sudden global catastrophe. It began when Earth’s crust failed on a continental scale.

The geological trigger most closely associated with the Permian–Triassic extinction event is a vast region of volcanic rock in northern Asia known as the Siberian Traps. What occurred there was not a typical volcanic eruption. It was a prolonged rupture of the planet’s surface, sustained over hundreds of thousands of years.

What the Siberian Traps Were

The Siberian Traps are what geologists call a large igneous province. Instead of a single volcano, magma rose through vast fractures in the crust, spilling out as flood basalts. Lava spread across an area larger than modern Europe, layering kilometer upon kilometer of solidified rock.

These eruptions were not brief. Radiometric dating indicates repeated pulses over roughly one million years. From a planetary perspective, the crust did not explode. It leaked.

This distinction matters. The damage was cumulative.

Gas, Not Lava, Was the Killer

Most life was not destroyed by lava flows directly. The lethal effects came from what the eruptions released into the atmosphere.

The Siberian Traps emitted enormous quantities of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and other volcanic gases. Carbon dioxide drove long-term warming. Sulfur compounds produced acid rain. Additional gases likely damaged the ozone layer, increasing surface-level ultraviolet radiation.

The planet warmed rapidly. Weather patterns destabilized. Soils degraded. Forests weakened and died back. These changes unfolded over generations, not days, making escape impossible for most species.

Why the Location Didn’t Matter

One of the most important lessons of the Siberian Traps is that distance offered no protection. While the eruptions occurred in what is now Siberia, extinction was global.

Atmospheric circulation spread gases worldwide. Oceans absorbed heat and carbon, altering chemistry everywhere. Even regions untouched by lava experienced collapsing ecosystems. The planet functioned as an integrated system, and once key components failed, failure propagated.

This explains why mass extinction struck areas far removed from volcanic activity. The system itself had crossed a threshold.

A Slow-Motion Disaster

From a human perspective, the Siberian Traps represent a slow-motion catastrophe. Each individual eruption may have seemed survivable. Over time, the accumulation proved fatal.

This distinguishes the Great Dying from later extinction events. There was no single moment of destruction to adapt around. Conditions simply worsened until survival became statistically unlikely.

Setting the Stage for Collapse

By the time oceans began losing oxygen and marine ecosystems started to fail, the damage was already done. The atmosphere had changed. The climate had shifted. Earth’s internal feedback loops were moving in the wrong direction.

The Siberian Traps did not kill life directly. They destabilized the systems that made complex life possible.

The next essay in this series will examine how the oceans—Earth’s primary climate regulator—were the first major system to collapse.

---

For more social commentary, please see Occupy 2.5 at https://Occupy25.com

This essay will be archived as part of the ongoing WPS News Monthly Brief Series available through Amazon.

References

Burgess, S. D., Bowring, S. A., & Shen, S. (2014). High-precision timeline for Earth’s most severe extinction. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(9), 3316–3321.
Courtillot, V. E., & Renne, P. R. (2003). On the ages of flood basalt events. Comptes Rendus Geoscience, 335(1), 113–140.
Self, S., Widdowson, M., Thordarson, T., & Jay, A. E. (2006). Volatile fluxes during flood basalt eruptions. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 248(1–2), 518–532.