Did a Greenland Asteroid Cause Abrupt Warming Last Ice Age?

UPDATE 2022 Phys.org: The asteroid smashed into Earth, leaving a […]

Post Author:

Chris Machens

Date Posted:

November 15, 2018

UPDATE 2022

Phys.org: The asteroid smashed into Earth, leaving a thirty-one-kilometer-wide, one-kilometer-deep crater. The crater is big enough to contain the entire city of Washington D.C. Today, the crater lies beneath the Hiawatha Glacier in Northwest Greenland. Rivers flowing from the glacier supplied the researchers with sand and rocks that were superheated by the impact 58 million years ago.

Clear evidence that the Hiawatha impact disrupted global climate is still lacking. However, the crater’s dating allows the international research team working on the crater to begin testing various hypotheses to better understand what its impact was on both the local and global climate.

2018

We report the discovery of a large impact crater beneath Hiawatha Glacier in northwest Greenland. From airborne radar surveys, we identify a 31-kilometer-wide, circular bedrock depression beneath up to a kilometer of ice http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/11/eaar8173

Hiawatha Glacier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiawatha_Glacier

Sources

Related

Abrupt Climate Change explained by Jim White https://earthclimate.tv/video/abrupt-climate-change-past-present-and-future/

About the Author: Chris Machens

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Covering the climate for Climate State since 2011. Peter Sinclair noted in 2017, "Climate State has been doing an absolutely amazing job of providing a useful historical archive of important experts warning on climate issues through past decades."

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