4 ms·
Great article! A couple of questions: 1.) Could the type of wide-spread glaciation you propose be aided by clustering of continental mass at or near the poles?
by hodgesrm 8y ago
Great article! A couple of questions:
1.) Could the type of wide-spread glaciation you propose be aided by clustering of continental mass at or near the poles?
2.) Is there any research into what sort of event(s) might trigger world-wide glaciation?
Apologies if it was in the article and I missed it. The notion is definitely cool. :)
Cheers, Robert
- cbkeller 8y agoGood questions! 1) Perhaps counter-intuitively, it's generally thought to be easier to enter a Snowball state when most of the continents are at the equator, the reasons being (A) silicate weathering of the continents consumes CO2 and is faster at low latitudes and (B) the albedo (reflectivity) contrast between ice and water is greater than the albedo contrast between ice and land. Ice is very reflective, water is not, and land is in between. In other words, if you grow sea ice at the poles, you make Earth more reflective, and the change in light (and heat) reflected per unit area of ice cover is greater for ice grown over oceans than ice grown over land. There is some background on the history of the Snowball Earth hypothesis, including the above points about albedo, here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth 2) Definitely. I don't know the right answer yet, but here's a relatively recent (and relatively accessible) Scientific American article on the topic: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-new-idea-on-how-earth-became-a-giant-snowball/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-new-idea-on-how...
- hodgesrm 8y agoThanks! Really great to see this article getting publicity on HN. :)