Was the Toba Eruption Not the Volcanic Catastrophe We Thought It Was?

The Toba caldera in Indonesia seen from the Space Shuttle in 1985. NASA The largest eruption in the past million years was at Toba in Indonesia. How big was it? It erupted over 3000 cubic kilometers of volcanic debris. 3000 cubic kilometers! That would pave the entirety of Rhode Island in a kilometer deep of ash, rocks, and pumice. It would take roughly 300 Pinatubo-scale eruptions to match that. The eruption itself created a caldera formed when the land collapsed when all that material erupted that spans 100 kilometers from end to end and 30 kilometers from side to side. Thick deposits of ash can be found in India, thousands of kilometers away. This is truly a "super-eruption". You'd expect that an eruption of this enormous magnitude would have a big impact on the Earth's climate. The eruption occurred ~73,000 years ago, which is well after the arrival of modern ...