What caused it to snow for 1000 years? (Part 3)
This article explains my past piece, the 1000-year Snow Storm Part 2. It was not my intention to confuse, just to float an IDEA that geothermal activity under the Arctic Ocean could be the trigger of the Great Ice Ages.
My last article generated the start of a good discussion, which I welcome continuing below. The gist of this idea has many facets and involves many scientific principles all collected together into one presentation spanning One Thousand Years that started them, or One Hundred Thousand years of the Ice Ages.
Let us begin at the end of the accretion stages when the 1000-year snow storm finally ceased. The North American Continent was covered with Ice, may be as much as One Mile or more thick from the tops of the Alaskan highlands right up to Nova Scotia. The thermal event is over and the winds are no longer wet, BUT the earths Albedo has been severely disturbed. It will take 100,000 years or so to warm up!
The cycle of Ice Ages and Inter-glacial ages is well established, what sets the Ice ages into motion is not at all understood, that is what this paper is about.
The Holocene spans this entire Epoch, and depending upon who you read the Ice Ages started between 1.2 and 1.0 Million years ago and there have been as many as six swings between them and the short periods of the Inter-Glacial. So, what sets the Ice Age in motion?
Indeed what causes them to end, and inter-glacial to begin?
The North American plate and the Eurasia plate have been in close proximity for all this time, they are NOT stationary but bump along in many different ways, let me propose that 1.2 million years ago the boundary between these two gigantic plates became geologically very active along the entire length of several thousand miles. No major volcanoes are in evidence in that region but who is really looking under the icy waters around the North Pole?
The activity was constant beneath several Hundred Yards of the Arctic Ocean, and for the sake of this paper that activity lasts for 1000 years, hot spots appearing here and there but, always giving off more heat than the evaporation process can accommodate.
The result the Arctic Ocean heats up, albeit slowly. There would of course be variations in the rate of heating, but generally the trend would be an increased surface temperature, until the tectonic movement effectively ceased for a Hundred Thousand years or so!
So, at the start of the Ice Age, we have a slow heating of the Arctic Ocean. The immediate effect is more water vapour in the atmosphere, so, it is carried off to the East over the flattish Siberian wastes, then it meets the Alaskan Mountains where it rises up and sheds moisture, it begins to snow!
It takes years for this snow to accumulate to the point where glaciation begins. It takes decades for the sea levels to drop. It takes years for the arctic ocean to become ice free during the Northern Hemisphere summer, but when that happens things speed up a little as with more water exposed to the atmosphere more evaporation occurs and it begins to snow in earnest.
The warm waters of the Arctic Ocean keep the west coast of Alaska essentially ice free, it rains a lot there!
Quite quickly there is less and less ice floating around the North Pole. Then one year there is none. The effective heat from the Sun now adds to the heating effect as with no ice the Earths albedo is severely affected, the evaporation continues summer and winter, the snow fall increases in Alaska and beyond, into Canada.
Snow accumulates on the Alaskan High country and glaciation inland to the East begins to advance across the country. This drops the average temperature and we in effect get a quite slow but, inexorable thermal runaway situation where the still warm wet winds are swept across the glaciers and dump yet more snow on the Eastern slopes of the Alaskan highlands.
Things settle down somewhat with the snow stretching ever further east with each winter and less and less being melted during the summer due mainly to the cloudy atmosphere. The Earth’s albedo is being slowly altered leading to more reflected sunlight leading to yet more snow over Alaska and Canada, not a lot but it continues to snow day after day, week after week, month after month and year after year.
Eventually the entire North American Continent north of 50 degrees latitude is covered in snow and one year it is not melted by the summer heat. This increases the Eartha’s albedo somewhat but the damage has been done. The Arctic Ocean will be ice free for a thousand years or so!
Meanwhile the water levels in the Arctic Ocean have been dropping and the water temperature begins to get hotter at an accelerated pace, leading to yet more wet warm winds across Alaska.
Things begin to speed up now, as the Earths summer Albedo is severely impacted by all that snow that refuses to melt. The summer snow storms are depositing many yards of snow which begin to compact into ice. A point of no return is reached and all that snow continued to compact, at around 1 yard per year and that will continue for many centuries, until the Bearing Straight closes!
The Ice Age gathers speed now as with only the cold waters from the North Atlantic the currents change and the heating effect increases. The Gulf stream flow increases but, the amount of water crossing to warm the UK slows and may even have stopped, due to the lower water levels. The winds pick up across the North Atlantic and glaciation of Norway already a cold place begins in earnest as does the glaciation of the UK. Dogger Land is exposed, yet more land is snow covered for much of the year.
As the water recedes more and more low-lying lands are uncovered which get snow covered and the Earths Albedo is further affected. It continues to snow for the next 1000 years or so, the snow stretching right across the Northern hemisphere every harsh winter, perhaps melting in the eastern regions where the warm, even hot artic ocean keeps the coastal areas ice free.
The tectonic activity ceases perhaps quite abruptly and the Arctic ocean begins to cool. Taking much much longer to cool and for the water levels to return to what we have today.
It continues to snow in Alaska and Canada, until the Arctic Ocean once more freezes over during winter. Then one year that ice does not melt and the Earths albedo returns to something close to what we see today.
The Ice Age is now firmly established, with a cooling Artic Ocean and less snow in Alaska, but all there is to melt that snow and ice is the Sun. The Ice Age very slowly stops getting colder and slowly begins to warm up, VERY SLOWLY.
It takes about One Hundred thousand years for the interglacial to become established, this then raises the sea levels and the Bearing Straight re-appears and quite quickly the ice sheet melts forming those great Icey Cold lakes that caused the mega floods across Canada.
It has to be remembered that lakes have a shore line that goes all the way around the lake, that makes for a good measurement of just how much ice there was. The benches around the places where those Mega-floods started will give the depth of the ice and the height of the ice wall that broke and the amount of water that caused the Dry Falls for example will give the extent of the size of those lakes!
There was a glacier poking out of those places hence the benches, the difference in height between the bench and the valley summit will give the height of the water of those Mega floods, it should not take much to work out how long those floods were active, small opening, huge lake to drain.
This cycle has repeated five or six times!
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Micheal,
This morning my wife read to me that Venus and Jupiter were in conjunction and that today there was a New Moon. Which factors might produce extreme spring tides in the oceans and atmosphere. And we know that the most extreme ocean tides have been observed to be 40+ feet between the high and low levels at about 55N in the Atlantic.
It bothers me when I read about what has been for a 1000 years because I know what has been from one year to the next in South and North Dakota during my lifetime. You and we need to identify the cyclic factors we has observed to exist and first deal with them before we pretend to know which occurred only a 1000 years ago.
However, your papers (articles, essays, whatever) cause me to ponder and that is good. I need to do a little research to refresh my memory for I am going to attend another session of a Symposium titled ‘Energy Transition and Decarbonization’ at Ohio State University.
Have a good day and keep up the good work, Jerry
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Michael Clarke
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It is only an idea jerry, not worthy of a theory, but it has merit, as what else could have produced ice that thick over most of the North American land mass?
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Michael Clarke
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Now just to be clear about this event, The arctic ocean would be ice free for around 1000 years, that is all it takes to freeze up the North American continent!
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Michael,
Right NOW you must go to the Fluid Earth Viewer website (https://fever.byrd.osu.edu/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=-82.98,39.98,335).
Start viewing the US and points into the Artic Ocean about 2/6/2021.. And you will see that the coldest air masses form over Canada and not over the Arctic Ocean. And then look at the same dates for 2020 and that the difference is that the coldest air masses over Canada form further to East etc.
This is all I have briefly looked at this morning. For we at Salem OR have had for two days a freezing ice event which broke apart deciduous trees, or pulled their roots out of the ground which had not happened like this during the 40+ years of their life times. This even though during another unique freezing ice event very tall conifer trees were being snapped apart as they began leaning and bending too much.
The trees are not the issue, the issue is the ‘rare’ ice storm which formed on the ‘warn’ west coast of North America at about 45N latitude. Any ideas about cold air masses and rare ice storms that occur NOW for a few days and then are gone instead of pondering about a 1000 year weather event that may have lasted for a 1000 years?
Have a good day, Jerry
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Herb Rose
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Hi Micheal,
The area of the ocean is 139,000,000 square miles. A reduction of 1 inch of depth requires the removal of 2200 cubic miles of water or 22000 cubic miles of ice. A 1 mile thick layer of ice would cover 2,200,000 square miles of land. If you covered the entire North America continent with a mile deep ice layer, sea levels of the oceans would decline by less than 5 inches.
Herb
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Micheal,
Do not talk about a possible 1000 year snow storm of the past before you do not inventory all that we ‘know’,.with some assurance, about the Arctic Ocean of the present.
There is a good sized very deep ‘hole with apparent steep sides according the bottom map I have. I have no idea what the temperature is of the water in this deep hole and there is a second not quite as deep in the southweat quadrant of the ocean. I can imagine much of this deep water is quite warm or even hot (whatever warm or hot might be. Follow Mosaic drifted over the deepest hole and its temperature was never mentioned but I would hope it was measured. I know they were regularly measuring measuring the gases which were proposed to being emitted from (vents??) in the bottom.
One thing I know that carbon dioxide can be inserted in carbonated sodas which only slowly out gas unless they are shaken. I know any gase that is inject into the water at the bottom of this deep hole must be in the liquid phase initially. And I consider this liquid carbon dioxide (if is one of the gases being ejected from any vents) would maybe be more dense than liquid water so I, if really imagine what might be, could be a pool of pure liquid carbon dioxide under a great deal of pressure. And I can image this pool would be highly unstable.
And if you compare the value of ice at its maximum in May and the minimum in September you will see that 80% of the volume melts in about 5 months..
And I finally saw something obvious about two lakes I have fished upon (Lake Traverse and Big Stone Lake). These two lakes which form the border between South Dakota and Minnesota are divided by a narrow swampy area. Lake Travese drains north via the Red River of the North evidently to Hudson Bay and Big Stone Lake eventually drains to the Gulf of Mexico mainly via the Mississippi River. Now Lake Traverse has few stones (boulders) and Big Stone Lake has many, many stones (boulders on its bottom and along its shores. Suddenly I finally saw a likely sources of the bloopers we found on the farm where I grew up about 50 miles south of Big Stone Lake.
And a climatic fact about North and South Dakotas and western Minnesotat this is where the cold air masses from time to time each winter migrate south to meet the warm air masses from the Gulf of Mexico via the Mississippi River and that the Missouri to create some of the most severe Blizzards known to man.
So for North America I doubt that mile thick glaciers are needed to form the deep glacier ‘brelatively deep valleys which exist a few miles to the south of our farm. But there is more less localized evidence of the sand hills and pot-holes also. But after the divide iit generally all downhill as the glaciers formed in southern Canada and ND and SD and Minnesota slide downhill as they melt. Of course, this is only what I image from the evidence I am very familiar with. Now I finally recognize the existence of the glaciers about which I cannot remember being taught about.
Just something to keep the discussion going.
Have a good day, Jerry.
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Michael Clarke
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Good to hear from you Jerry and Herb.
Firstly my response to Herb, 50 cubic miles of ice a year for 1000 years equates quite closely to the amount of water to lower the sea levels sufficiently to close the Bearing Straight.
To Jerry I am heartened to hear of those deep holes in the Arctic Ocean floor. If essentially, a there and back travers of a tiny fraction of the ocean floor found just two such inverted volcanoes, what if there are a few hundred or even a thousand such holes along several thousand miles of the boundary between the North American and Eurasian plates? What if they are currently in a geologically quite phase?
To all my readers I am thinking BIG picture here!
It snowed for a long time for that ice to form, hence the title!
I am working on Part 4 in an attempt to cross all the ‘t’s and dot all the ‘i’s.
Remember to think BIG and I really mean BIG PICTURE!
Did all that ice stretch all the way across the Arctic Ocean?
How much water was released in those Mega Floods?
How much heat was required to evaporate all that water to be deposited as snow?
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Herb Rose
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Hi Michael,
Are you using the volume of the ice compared to the volume of the ocean? Since the ocean is more like a very shallow inverted pyramid where the volume of water decreases in a non linear fashion with depth I think you need to calculate the change in sea level using the area of the ocean rather than the volume.
Herb
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Michael,
“It snowed for a long time for that ice to form, hence the title!”
What ice??? You write as if the ice you propose is a fact. You are joining Aristotle and his fellow philosophers who reasoned about what they made up. The only big PICTURE can be what we generalize from that we actually have observed. we humans have only known about nuclear activity for less than two centuries.
Yet, in Oregon we have Crater Lake which was formed when a volcanic mountain blew its top. I know this (believe this) because in my lifetime I have seen a mountain before it blew its top and after it blew its top. And the big picture is that the energy suddenly released has been building from nuclear reactions that have been NATURALLY for what I can imagine to be a long time but I certainly do not know for how long a time. I do not believe anyone can predict when another ‘major’ volcanic eruption or a major earthquake will occur with a period of a certain day, week, month, year, or century which I can see the result of having occurring in the past.
The only quantities we KNOW are those being measured NOW and those .MEASURED and RECORDED in the PAST. That is all the information we have to reason about.
I do not believe anyone can predict an obviously random event. But we can see the results of some random events.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Michael Clarke
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Hi Jerry, are you in denial that ice a mile or so thick did not cover most if not all of the North American Continent five or six times since the first Ice Age began around 1.2 million years ago?
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Michael,
Have you looked at The Siberian Tundra Is Doing That Exploding Thing Again still on the first page of PSI?
Have a good day, Jerry
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Michael Clarke
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Hi Jerry, did you not understand the article?
It is a theory that explosions are causing those holes!
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