I like looking the Middle-earth's biological and geographical phenomenons from a scientific point of view. In a way it makes Arda feel more real if its laws of nature even occasionally correspond with ours. But still, it's a world where eagles can carry people and dead men can be summoned to a war, so many things are explained by the fact that it is a story.
Lalwendė brought up a question (or three of them
) about Sauron's controll over Orodruin. I think Mount Doom starting to act up again was more due to the kind of magic that you see in Middle-earth than what Sauron would physically have done to the mountain. Also, as has already been mentioned, the active volcano was one sort of a weapon. I think the volcanic fumes that it belched were intentional and useful by themselves rather than byproducts of something Sauron was doing by using the mountain or just a convenient coincidence.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Smaug
Maybe the fires of Orodruin were in great tumult as they were being utilised as a source of developing Sauron's armies (e.g. making armour and weaponry with the fires it provided).
|
From what I've read, I think that Mount Doom was a composite volcano of some sort. Its lava was rhyolitic ie. it contained a lot of oxidants (SiO2), its temperature was between 600 and 900 celsius degrees and hence it wasn't very runny. Such lava could easily block its eruption channel causing the pressure inside a volcano to grow. Therefore the volcano could erupt explosively throwing huge hot clouds of ash, lava, rocks and gases in the air.
If Sauron would have made other ways to channel lava out of the mountain, I think it would rather have had a soothing than upsetting effect on the volcano.
A volcano like Mount Doom could easily have caused something to the effect of nuclear winter. However, in real life small particles that a volcano has emitted can stay up in the stratosphere absorbing and reflecting the sunlight even for years making the temperatures drop world-wide. If the darkness that Sauron conjured up had been purely something like that, would 1420 have been such a wonderful year in the Shire?