Younger Dryas-Sudden Cooling

http://frontiers-of-anthropology.blogspot.gr/search/label/Younger%20Dryas

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2012

Younger Dryas-Sudden Cooling

This reconstructed temperature map for the younger dryas event is more significant than the makers realised. It is also virtually a snapshot of the condition of the earth at the point the celestial-body-impact began to make its effects known: this is because when the event hit, it was like going from a mild early-summer climate in the Northern hemisphere immediately into the middle of a harsh winter. And this map basically goes to indicate where the thick cloud of dust covered the land and brought down the temperatures from the onset of the event (compare the next map below)

Using the figures provided by Otto Muck about the submergence of Atlantis, the eruptions at the mid-Atlantic ridge in the vicinity of the Azores led to the immediate formation of a mushroom cloud 25 to 50 miles high and up to 1000 miles wide in a disc shape. It contained 5  million cubic miles of water and up to 1/2 million cubic miles of aerated volcanic dust and debris. Within a very short while, the jet stream winds had whipped the debris cloud around the Northern Hemisphere : it was high enough and thick enough to eventually reach the Southern Hemisphere and disrupt weather patterns there also. The cloud was mostly heavily laden with water vapour and atomized volcanic dust, but also included lethal levels of carbon monoxide and carbon  dioxide.

Younger Dryas Impacts on Climate
From a different website, but indicating specific evidences that go toward reinforcing the big picture. There was also a strong upwelling (deepwater rsing to the top layers and altering temperature levels and possibly even the atmosphere) along the US East coast. This upwelling could also have come along with belches of methane gas from the great depths. The volcanic activity is gone into with more specific details below.

The  inspiration for this posting comes because of Rodney Chilton's book and blog Sudden Cold, concerning the Younger Dryas period. The younger Dryas really was an aburpt change in climate but also in mant other ways, including some geophysical readjustments and not to neglect evidences for both a geomagnetic inversion but also a shifting of the Earth's outer crust over the inner layers (The outer crustal layers are not in any way anchored to the lower levels and a molten band called the Athenisphere separates the two: and also it is known now that the different layers of the earth's interior rotate at different speeds and are not in synch; therefore slippage between the different layers is not only to be expected, it is a continual ongoing process.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/thegreengrok/climatedebate
http://anthropology.net/2009/12/09/the-clovis-comet-that-wasnt-mystery-deepens/http://www.joyofcrisis.com/JoyofCrisis.com/Something_Strange_Happened.html
http://ie.lbl.gov/mammoth/mammoth.html
http://bcclimate.com/
http://bcclimate.com/Comet%20Impact%20Hypotheses.html
http://www.amazon.com/Cycle-Cosmic-Catastrophes-Stone-Age-Changed/dp/1591430615

 Arctic conditions were heralded by the presence of this flowering tundra plant, the Dryas octopetalia

Chronology of the Younger Dryas event as recorded in Greenland Ice layers Using the unadjusted C14 dates 

Nature, Vol. 323 18 September 1986 p. 247
"Late-Glacial Climatic Oscillation in Atlantic Equivalent to the Alerod/ Younger Dryas Event" Robert J. Mott, Douglas R. Grant, Ralph Stear and Serge Occhetti.

The shores of Newfoundlandland and New Brunswicke at ca 10000 BC were lined with birch and spruce trees during a relatively warmer interval, but were struck with a sudden "widespread and synochrous climatic disturbance of sufficient magnitude to strongly affect depositional environments throughout Atlanic Canada." Organic deposition was replaced by mineral deposition and sand banks covered the former forest beds at about 11000 years ago. the mineral deposits covered over all ponds, lakes, peat beds, land areas and water courses [in fact the Carolina Bays were filled in with similar sediment at the same time. see photo below for Carolina bays] This is asociated with "Stirred" sedimrentary layers and false radiocarbon dates.
This event is correlated to North Atlantic cores which demonstrate that at 14000-15000 BP the polar front lay across the Ocean at about 40 degrees North back to a nearly "modern" polar front N. of Iceland before 11000 years ago (C14 dates about 9200 BC) and then with an excursion to another polar front as before at almost exactly 11000-10000 BP C14 nonadjusted dates, averaging at Muck's date of ca 8500 BC for this event. Furthermore there is an ash bed full across the North Atlantic at exactly this same level, and it extends from New England to Iceland to Scandinavia again at the dates estimated at 8500-8600 BC. From the depositional qualities mentioned  in the article, it wseems there was a massive  wave scouring off the coastlines before the glacial advance : Water and then followed by Ice: increased precipitation and erosion, including flushing sediments into the ocean beds, had occurred BEFORE the glaciers had re-advanced. This Younger Drryas event was one of global scope: "Not simply a North Atlantic  regional phenomenon resulting from ice shelf breakup, meltwater diversion, reorientation of atmospheric flow or deepwater production" although all of threse things were asociated with the event. 

Map of glaciation at glacial maximum. The Younger Dryas was a period when the glacier was in retreat in an intergalcial stage, marked in Britain by the presence of warm-weather beetles in forest bed deposits, and then the climate did a suddenn about-face to full-glacial conditions again.

One of the things I found out about this recently was that the event was marked by a sudden glacial melting at the margin which was linked to the idea of a comet exploding over the region. Robert Kline specifies that the explosion was over Hudson's Bay, then the North Pole going by Hapgood's construction. I do not follow Hapgood so rigidly but I do note that the event occurred near Hudson's Bay. 

another map indicating the melt area as a forerunner of Lake Agassiz: the ACTUAL Lake Agassiz would not form until the melting of the glacier which READVANCED after this event. At this time, approx 9000 BC uncalibrated C14 date, there was an extensive forest over Michigan, Illinois and Indiana known as the Two Creeks Forest bed: the forest got knocked down when the glaciers readvanced. The usually-recognised Lake Agassiz was formed in the wake of the Younger Dryas in RETREAT

This is a map of a more extreme estimation of how much inland area was under water following the event just described and comparable to an estimated Intergalacial high. as I see it, this represents the approximate boundaries of the sea wave before the reglaciation-a colossal tsunami that met the coastlines at several thousand feet high and swept inland to an altitude of 1000 ft mid-continent. In certan older books about the glacial period you would get references to the submergence, or more  limited subsections of it such as the "Hershey Sea". This event was also the one in which whale skeletons became stranded on mountaintops, oceanic seashells wound up in the Midwest of the USA and in European Russia, and many of the small lakes and soils of the area registered as distinctly saline after the wave retreated. (I have articles from SCIENCE magazine about this salinization event)

Illustration of the "Black Bed" layer in a cross-section of a hillside The Black beds are visually distinctive And there are the Black beds everywhere, indicating the precipitation out of black carbonaceous (sooty) material out of the Atmosphere over a wide area.

Carbonized upper layer of fossil soil, illustrating the ash layer caused by intense forest fires of the period. This carbonized layer is the layer that can contain tektites and minidiamonds (indicating a collision with a large comet or asteroid)

Carolina Bays, Putative massively cratered beds all along the US East coast and commonly thought to be the result of heavy meteorite showers at the end of the Ice Age and simultaneous woth the Cape Yourk meteorites in Northern Greenland, also from the end of the Pleistocene. 

Zhirov's Atlantis states on p383 bottom to 385 top, "Many investigators point out that Plato's date of the destruction of Atlantis synchronizes with many geological and other events. For example, Y.G. Reshetov draws attention that this date harmonizes with the eruption of Eifel [volcanic field in Germany] and Puy de Dome, and with tectonic activity in the Balkan Peninsula, the Carpathians, the Caucasus and elsewhere. A.A. Gorbovsky likewise underscores this date. G. Arrnius notes that the end of the last glaciation was accompanied by violent volcanic eruptions at Lake Laachern in Central Europe, in Iceland, and the North Atlantic generally, in the Mediterranean, along the entire Andes coast of Central and South America, in Patagonia and in other areas" Zhirov gives dates for the destruction of Atlantis from Muck's date of 8498 BC to a more general date of 9500 BC, which is within the same general margin for error (My notes speak of the problems of C14 dates at this juncture at tis point)
Zhirov's chart on p. 382 includes #13, Great volcanic eruptions of the North Atlantic after Bramlette and Bradley, Klenova and Larov, and the Piggott-Urrey cores, at about 10000 years ago.
#14 End of Allerod interstadial in Europe after Barendsen, Deevey and Gralenski approx 9500-8500 BC [Thereafter the Dryas Glacial period-DD]
#15, First considerable penetration of warm Atlantic waters into the Arctic ocean after Yermolayev, 1000 to 8000 years ago (ie, earliest Postglacial 8000 to 6000 BC: and this also includes spreading of loose Atlantic volcanic debris into the Arctic Ocean near Spitzbergen noted by more recent American authors)
#16 Latest eruption of the Eifel volcano after Straka, 9350 years ago or 7350 BC
Elsewhere Zhirov also notes a lava flow on the site of modern Mexico city at just before 8100 BC

The Smithsonian Institution's publication Volcanores of the World list the following from the earliest Postglacial period (Glacial-period eruptions are not on this list):
ca 8000-9000 BC Lassen Peak, California
ca 8600 to 8000 BC, Eifel Volcanic field
ca 8450 to 8150 BC, Mount Shasta, California
ca 8250 to 8050 BC, Emuangogolak, East Africa
ca 8100-8000 BC, Taupo volcanic crater New Zealand (very large)
ca 8100-8000 BC, Mt Edziza, Canada
ca 8250-8000 BC (possibly less) Chaine des Puys, France
ca 8040-7635 BC SW Lake, Taupo fields,New Zealand
b.7900 BC, Ruapehu, New Zealand (very large)
b. 7900 BC, Lipari Islands, Italy
ca 7750 BC, Taupo volcanic crater, New Zealand (very large)
ca 7950- 7550 BC Tongariro New Zealand (very large)
ca 7750-7500 BC, Hijiori, Japan
ca 7610-7475 BC, Mt Adams, Washington
ca 7660-7460 BC Witori group, New Britain, Melanesia
ca 7530 -7440 BC, Luinaya Pas'i, Kurile Islands, Siberia (very large)
ca 7530-7000 BC, secondary cone formation at Mt Shasta (very large)
ca. 7500 BC, Ushiship caldera, Kurile islands, Siberia

The Denise skeleton was buried in a lava flow associated with Le Puy and was considered very ancient as a result, but it turns out to be final-Pleistocene because the contemporaneous skeleton of a mammoth later also turned up in the same stratum. The Laschamp magnetically inverted period is associated and this lava flow is magnetically reversed. The latest possible date of this would be 7500- 8000 BC as the date of a sediment laver over the deposits.

A lava flow at Mauna Kea, Hawaii, is thought to date from the end of the Pleistocene, 8000-9000 BC. (Volcanoes in the Sea, Gordon A. MacDonald, 1983) There are also mudslides in late-Pleistocene Hawaii that are simultaneous to mudslides in the Cascade mountains area, including Mt St Helens.

Charles Hapgood in Path of the Pole mentions five Japanese volcanoes thought to have erupted at the end of the Pleistocene (C14 dates estimated variously at 7000 to 12000 BC, p 135-136) and he notes the volcanoes in Patagonia gioing off simultaneously(Dated asaround 8000 to 7000 BC). Furthermore he quotes Frank Hibben of the U of New Mexico as to the existance of lava debris beds in association with the quickfrozen Mammoth beds of Siberia and Alaska.(Hibben, Frank C, The Lost Americans, 1946). There are also extensive lava flows in Central Asia at this time: all of these flows are at dates around 8000-9000 BC (Radiocarbon-non-adjusted)

Fred M Bullard's Volcanoes of the Earth, 1984, gives us the further information:
Mt Mazuma (>Crater Lake) erupted several times prior to its final explosion at about 6000 BC which blew 15 cubic miles off the top of the mountain (p 83). The original cones of Mt Aetna,  Krakatoa and Vesuvius are thought to have formed during eruptions at the end of the Pleistocene. There might well have been lesser eruptions at Thera/Santorini at this same period in time.(p 85-87)
Sometime about 10000 years ago a volcano erupted in Nicaragua leaving ash beds which preserve the tracks of ice-age animals and people. Mount Pelee, Martinique is also formed inside a prehistoric caldera (p 121) Pelee and other volcanoes on Guadeloupe and Dominica were volcanically very active at the close of the pleistocene (118-119)
Mount Lanington, Papua New Guinea, also erupted at this time, somewhere between 9000 and 11000 BC (p 147) Jamaca isd not volcanic, but it experienced massive earthquakes which collapsed a large part of its cave system and tuned the collapsed areas into "Valleys"
Iceland is covered with late-Pleistocene lava flows thought to date to 8000-9000 BC. The Westmann Islands were built up in eruptions of that age and lay quiescent  for 6000 years or more after that, until the building up of the recent volcanic island Surtsey.
Mount Baker began in a series of eruptions starting about 8300 BC and continuing up to about 6000 BC. Mount Ranier experienced a major eruption which blew away half of its original mass and generated large mudflows at about the same time (p 592)    Mount St Helens erupted several times in succession at this time, and has interbedded lava flows with glacial deposit layers (p 547). Mount Newberry in Oregon had a great eruption at about 7000 BC (Frederick Johnson in "Radiocarbon Dating", 1951)
And besides the eruptions at the Azores, there were apparently other erutptions of the Canary Islands , including periods of submergence into the ocean and subsequent re-emergence, plus possible eruptions in the mid-Sahara and possibly elsewhere in Eastern Africa.

Volcanic Ash bed in Alaska of Younger Dryas age. Volcanic eruptions in Kamchitka and Japan, and even Mount St Helens, were contemporaneous with these beds and Hibben had mentioned that such volcanic traces mark the faunal zone where the extinction of the mammoths occured. This would be the level where the numerous frozen mammoths, bison and other creatures are found in Alaska and Siberia: there are similar mass killings of mammoths and mastodons south of the Continental icesheets, notably in New York state, but the area did not remain permafrost and if any of the creatures were quick-frozen there, the area thawed out later and all of the corpses rotted over time. Best Wishes, Dale D.