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Triggers for the Late Ordovician Ice Age: Volcanic Aerosols vs. CO 2

Triggers for the Late Ordovician Ice Age: Volcanic Aerosols vs. CO 2. Konrad Cunningham UG Eric Santiago HSS Linda Sohl PI Mark Chandler PI. Ordovician Period. Started about 500 million years ago. Hardly any plants or animals lived on the land; most were in the sea.

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Triggers for the Late Ordovician Ice Age: Volcanic Aerosols vs. CO 2

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  1. Triggers for the Late Ordovician Ice Age: Volcanic Aerosols vs. CO2 Konrad Cunningham UG Eric Santiago HSS Linda Sohl PI Mark Chandler PI

  2. Ordovician Period • Started about 500 million years ago. • Hardly any plants or animals lived on the land; most were in the sea. • Compared to today’s Sun, the Sun of the Ordovician was 4% dim. • Most land masses were in the Southern Hemisphere.

  3. The Ice Age of the Ordovician • Lasted ~0.5 to ~1.5 million years. • Some researchers think that there was a high level of atmospheric CO2 • Our hypothesis: the sharp decrease in temperature could have been caused by a combination of low CO2 and high SO2 related to volcanic activity in the atmosphere.

  4. Paleogeography

  5. Volcano locations in the late Ordovician • The volcanoes were part of an island arc between Laurentia and Baltica. • These volcanoes were active and created 5,000 times the volume of ash than Mt. St. Helens’ eruption in 1980. • The eruptions were 3 of the 20 largest events in the last 600 million years.

  6. Anomaly Plots for SurfAirTemp CO2=1000 ppm, Solar=96% CO2=3000 ppm, Solar=96% CO2=500 ppm, Solar=96% CO2=1000ppm; Solar=94%

  7. Conclusion • Ord_testrun3 shows that a ice age is highly improbable with high atmospheric CO2, no matter what the level of solar luminosity. • Ord_testrun8 gives us the most probable conditions on Earth that would help create an ice age. • Future simulations will explore the effects of both high SO2 and low CO2 on Ordovician climate.

  8. References • Alaska Volcano Observatory http://www.avo.alaska.edu/activity/avoreport.php?view=kaminfo&id=199&type=kaminfo&month=October&year=2006 • ATMOSPHERIC TRANSMISSION OF DIRECT SOLAR RADIATION AT MAUNA LOA, HAWAII • http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/emissions_0207.pdf • Global Volcanism Program http://www.volcano.si.edu/ • Volcanic SO2 Archive Service http://www.oma.be/BIRA-IASB/Molecules/SO2archive/vs/orbit.php • Mount Pinatubo Eruption http://geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa030901a.htm • Ordovician http://en.wikipedie.org.wiki.Ordovian • Impacts of Volcanic Gases http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1997/of97-262/of/97-262.html • Ancient Oceans Separate the Continents http:/www.scotese.com/newpage1.html • The Geology of Ohio—The Ordovician http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/geosurvey/oh_geol/97_Fall/ordovici.htm • The size and frequency of the largest explosive eruptions on Earth • Nature and Origin of Life on Planetary Bodies http://www.fas.org/irp/imint/docs/rst/Sect20/A12.html

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