Snowball Earth

<p>AAAS: &ldquo;<a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/massive-lava-outburst-may-have-led-snowball-earth?utm_source=sfmc&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=DailyLatestNews&amp;utm_content=alert&amp;et_rid=49284587&amp;et_cid=4812112" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Massive lava outburst may have led to Snowball Earth</a>.&rdquo; About 717 million yrs ago a climate catastrophe struck the planet, an Icebox or Snowball Earth period. The cause was uncertain, until &ldquo;now, more precise dates, reported last month in&nbsp;<a href="https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0012821X23002728" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Earth and Planetary Science Letters</a>&nbsp;(EPSL) and in November 2022 in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adc9430" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Science Advances</a>, show&hellip;eruptions preceded the Snowball Earth event by 1 million to 2 million years.&rdquo; Geoscientists had debated the cause of this Sturtian glaciation, which lasted 57 million yrs, + considered meteorite strikes, biologic activity, shifts in Earth&rsquo;s orbit, and more. More recent studies coned down on one of the greatest volcanic outbursts ever, &lsquo;preserved today across northern Canada in what&rsquo;s called the Franklin large igneous province (LIP).&rsquo; The area covered left lava across an area at least as large as present-day Argentina, + possibly bigger than China. Volcanism can trigger cooling in two main ways. In one, eruptions release sulfur-rich gases, which form aerosols that block sunlight and cool the planet, though only for several months to yrs.</p> <p><a href="https://medium.com/@sandy.george.lawrence/snowball-earth-a32b866621cf"><strong>Read More</strong></a></p>
Tags: Snowball Earth