Planet Earth had become a giant snowball for at least five million years because of the event is known as the Sturtian glaciation, a no ordinary Ice Age that happened 717 million years ago. It is a mysterious phenomenon that spurred from pole to pole until now.

According to New Atlas, a new study reveals that the answer to the mystery might lie in the continual volcanic eruptions that may dump massive amounts of aerosols into the air and rapidly cool the planet. Harvard University's scientist proposes that the incidence of both snowball Earth and the major volcanism activity is not a coincidence.

With so much analysis, the researchers ended up looking into aerosols that might be the possible cause because of these volcanic emissions could give rise to such dramatic effects. These are the types of eruptions that happened over and over again all throughout the geological time, yet it is not related to any cooling events.

Mail Online reported that this mystery is known as the Franklin Large Igneous Province (LIP), a volcanic rock that is erupted through sulfur-rich sediments. These sediments will be launched into the atmosphere as a sulfur dioxide, a compound that absorbs solar radiation in the upper atmosphere. This event saw during the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991, which produces 10 million metric tons of sulfur in the air.

The researchers found that the sulfur dioxide reaches the stratosphere is critical in the effect. Because this is where most of the solar radiation that keeps the Earth warm enters, which means the light-reflecting gas that entered is just in the right spot to activate cooling. Cooling from aerosols does not make the planet frozen but drives the ice into a critical latitude.

These events will help the researchers to understand and also could provide important insights on the past extinctions. It also helps people to predict how the geoengineering strategy may affect the climate change.

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