It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
About 12,800 years ago when the Earth was warming and emerging from the last ice age, a dramatic and anomalous event occurred that abruptly reversed climatic conditions back to near-glacial state. According to James Kennett, UC Santa Barbara emeritus professor in earth sciences, this climate switch fundamentally –– and remarkably –– occurred in only one year, heralding the onset of the Younger Dryas cool episode
Now, in one of the most comprehensive related investigations ever, the group has documented a wide distribution of microspherules widely distributed in a layer over 50 million square kilometers on four continents, including North America, including Arlington Canyon on Santa Rosa Island in the Channel Islands. This layer –– the Younger Dryas Boundary (YDB) layer –– also contains peak abundances of other exotic materials, including nanodiamonds and other unusual forms of carbon such as fullerenes, as well as melt-glass and iridium. This new evidence in support of the cosmic impact theory appeared recently in a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences.
An estimated 10 million metric tons of impact spherules were deposited across nine countries in the four continents studied. However, the true breadth of the YDB strewnfield is unknown, indicating an impact of major proportions.
"This evidence continues to point to a major cosmic impact as the primary cause for the tragic loss of nearly all of the remarkable American large animals that had survived the stresses of many ice age periods only to be knocked out quite recently by this catastrophic event."
The material evidence supporting the YDB cosmic impact hypothesis spans three continents, and covers nearly one-third of the planet, from California to Western Europe, and into the Middle East. The discovery extends the range of evidence into Germany and Syria, the easternmost site yet identified in the northern hemisphere. The researchers have yet to identify a limit to the debris field of the impact.
"Because these three sites in North America and the Middle East are separated by 1,000 to 10,000 kilometers, there were most likely three or more major impact/airburst epicenters for the YDB impact event, likely caused by a swarm of cosmic objects that were fragments of either a meteorite or comet," said Kennett.
ALTHOUGH the Tibetan plateau is important in influencing the atmospheric circulation of the Northern Hemisphere1–3, there are only a few continuous palaeoclimate records available, and these are limited to the plateau's northeastern margin4–6. Here we present a 13,000-yr record from Sumxi Co (western Tibet), constructed from both lake-core and shoreline studies, which shows that conditions in the early–middle Holocene were warmer and wetter than at present. These results confirm model predictions of an intensified monsoon over the region at ~9,000 yr BP, owing to an orbitally induced increase in summer insolation7,8. We also find evidence for warm, humid pulses at ~12,500 and ~10,000 yr BP, in phase with the steps of the last deglaciation, and for a return to cold, dry conditions at ~11-10,000 yr BP, none of which can be explained by orbital variations. The existence of the cold episode confirms that the cooling associated with the Younger Dry as event occurred in continental China6,9, and provides further evidence of the global nature of this event10
Mark Bateman from the University of Sheffield in England said a catastrophic flood unleashed from a giant North American lake dumped large amounts of freshwater into the Arctic Ocean. This led to the shutting down of the Gulf Stream ocean circulation pattern that brings warmth to Europe. "We're talking about a lake the size of the UK emptying very quickly," Bateman told Reuters by telephone. "We don't know the exact period of time but we're talking about a catastrophic flood." The finding has confirmed past theories about the likely cause of a sudden cooling period called the Younger Dryas when temperatures in Europe, similar to today's, quickly returned to ice age conditions. The cooling lasted for about 1,400 years. "Our research shows that if you put a large volume of fresh water into the North Atlantic in a very short space of time, this is what happens," Bateman said. His team's work is published in the latest issue of the journal Nature.
"Our research shows that if you put a large volume of fresh water into the North Atlantic in a very short space of time, this is what happens," Bateman said. His team's work is published in the latest issue of the journal Nature.
Originally posted by 727Sky
reply to post by kdog1982
"Our research shows that if you put a large volume of fresh water into the North Atlantic in a very short space of time, this is what happens," Bateman said. His team's work is published in the latest issue of the journal Nature.
Gulf stream or Atlantic conveyor belt has been accused in many papers for causing an ice age in Europe when the flow shuts down. With the large increase in the ice around antarctica it is now proposed that due to the ice melt and fresh water content of the surrounding ocean it freezes at a warmer temp therefore the ice sheet grows. Many peaces to the puzzle but back to the original impact theory....If it happened as postulated that was a humdinger of an event and hard to envision much less survive..
Naturally as water vapor is removed from the Atlantic Ocean by the winds and the Atlantic gets saltier there must be some compensating action that brings freshwater back to the Atlantic, otherwise the Atlantic will continuously become saltier, the Pacific fresher. Compensation is accomplished by interocean exchange, the fresher Pacific waters make their way to the salty Atlantic. Much of the interocean exchange is part of a sluggish global scale circulation associated with North Atlantic Deep Water.
Originally posted by LightAssassin
reply to post by stormcell
Or a space war.
Something big happened then. The impact residue location corresponds to the old idea that whatever hit came in over the Mideast and ended near Alaska/Siberia. The nuclear particles from the same time mentioned by another poster suggesting a relatively nearby nova are interesting, but doesn't correlate with a debris field impacting our planet.. or does it?