Snowball Earth
<p>AAAS: “<a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/massive-lava-outburst-may-have-led-snowball-earth?utm_source=sfmc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DailyLatestNews&utm_content=alert&et_rid=49284587&et_cid=4812112" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Massive lava outburst may have led to Snowball Earth</a>.” About 717 million yrs ago a climate catastrophe struck the planet, an Icebox or Snowball Earth period. The cause was uncertain, until “now, more precise dates, reported last month in <a href="https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0012821X23002728" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Earth and Planetary Science Letters</a> (EPSL) and in November 2022 in <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adc9430" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Science Advances</a>, show…eruptions preceded the Snowball Earth event by 1 million to 2 million years.” Geoscientists had debated the cause of this Sturtian glaciation, which lasted 57 million yrs, + considered meteorite strikes, biologic activity, shifts in Earth’s orbit, and more. More recent studies coned down on one of the greatest volcanic outbursts ever, ‘preserved today across northern Canada in what’s called the Franklin large igneous province (LIP).’ 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>