The Geologic Record Documents in Considerable Detail Sudden Fast Global
Warming of Air Typically Within One to a Few Years Followed by Slow
Incremental Global Cooling of Oceans Over Millennia in Highly Erratic
Sequences Averaging Every 1000 Years During the Holocene and Every Few
Thousand Years Since the Eemian Climatic Optimum 120,000 BP
- Peter Ward
Peter Ward
US Geological Survey, retired
Corresponding Author:peward@wyoming.com
Author ProfileAbstract
Oxygen-isotope proxies for air temperature in Greenland ice cores, with
time resolutions of years to decades, document 25 periods from 120,000
to 14,000 BP when air temperatures warmed 5 to 16 oC within decades and
cooled slowly, incrementally, over millennia back down into ice-age
conditions. These clearly-observed Dansgaard--Oeschger events averaged
4000 years in length but were highly erratic in time of onset,
intensity, and duration. They were typically associated with volcanic
sulfate deposits and floods of fresh water into the North Atlantic. They
appear to be caused primarily by sub-glacial basaltic eruptions in
Iceland, the most intense of which lasted from 12,000 to 9500 BP, long
enough to warm the oceans out of the last ice age. Similar sequences of
current and warmer temperatures are observed in fine-layered sediments
in the Eocene Green River Formation where erratic sequences averaged
5000 years. The most rapid and intense changes in sedimentation and
fossils in the geologic time scale are contemporaneous with massive
basaltic lava flows covering millions of square kilometers of
continental rifts at the end of the Paleozoic, Carnian, Triassic,
Pliensbachian, Albian, Mesozoic, Paleocene, Eocene, etc. Large,
explosive, subduction-related volcanic eruptions form aerosols in the
lower stratosphere cooling the globe 0.5 oC for a few years. Modelling
shows that such short-term cooling of the whole ocean surface affects
ocean temperatures for as long as a century. In this way, several major
explosive eruptions per century over millennia cause slow, incremental
cooling down into ice-age conditions as clearly resolved in deep ocean
cores. It is very hard to explain these well-observed footprints of
climate change using greenhouse gases. While Pinatubo erupted as much as
234 megatons of CO2 in 1991, concentrations at Mauna Loa slowed their
rise due to cooling of the ocean surface. A set of 16 short videos,
numerous papers, a book, and dozens of web pages all referenced at
WhyClimateChanges.com document evidence for major effusive basaltic lava
flows being the primary cause of fast global warming and sequences of
major explosive volcanic eruptions being the major cause of slow
incremental global cooling. Furthermore, they explain why
greenhouse-warming theory is not only mistaken, it is
Physically-Impossible.com.