The Ice Age Floods

[abradley]

Not about Global Warming, just interesting:

The Ice Age Floods

Posted by Michael Hiteshew on January 1st, 2016 (All posts by Michael Hiteshew)

About 18,000 years ago, the Earth began to warm substantially. That was a really big deal, because the Northern Hemisphere was in an ice age. As much as 2 mile (~ 3-4 Km) thick ice sheets blanketed the northern continent. Because so much of the global water supply was locked up in ice, sea level dropped 350 feet (~ 120 m) and beaches and coastlines would have been miles further offshore than their current locations. Coastlines on the Atlantic Seaboard, and presumably globally, contain buried river channels cut deep into the continental shelf. During the Ice Age they weren’t buried, they were river valleys to then more distant shorelines.

--Image--
Last Glacial Maximum, 20,000 years ago

A wide lobe of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet crept across the valley of the Clark Fork River, eventually shutting off the flow completely, while the river pooled into the vast watershed behind it, including Missoula Valley, Flathead Valley, Thompson Valley, Mission Valley and Clearwater Valley. By 15,000-17,000 years ago the lake that was created, Glacial Lake Missoula, exceeded 2,000 feet (~ 600 m) in depth, had a surface area of ~3,000 square miles (6,500 Sq Km), and held 600 cubic miles (2,500 cubic Km) of water, as much as Lake Erie and Lake Ontario combined.

--Image--
Glacial flood map, 17,000 - 15,000 years ago


Read the rest of this entry » http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/50909.html#more-50909

And while on the subject of Floods, if this happened, it must have been spectacular:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanclean_flood
The Zanclean flood or Zanclean Deluge is a flood theorized to have refilled the Mediterranean Sea 5.33 million years ago.[1] This flooding ended the Messinian salinity crisis and marks the beginning of the Zanclean age. The term was coined by Maria Bianca Cita in 1972 during the Deep Sea Drilling Project study that investigated the transition between the Messinian and Zanclean ages in the Mediterranean.[2]

According to this model, water from the Atlantic Ocean refilled the cut-off inland seas through the modern-day Strait of Gibraltar. The Mediterranean Basin flooded over a period estimated to have been between several months and two years.[3][4] Sea level rise in the basin may have reached rates at times greater than ten metres per day.[3] Based on the erosion features preserved until modern times under the Pliocene sediment, these authors estimate that water rushed down a drop of more than a kilometer with a discharge of up to 108 m3/s, about 1000 times that of the present day Amazon River. Studies of the underground structures at the Gibraltar Strait show that the flooding channel descended in a rather gradual way toward the bottom of the basin rather than forming a steep waterfall.

Not all scientific studies agree with the catastrophistic interpretation of this event. Many authors maintain that the reinstallment of a "normal" Mediterranean Sea basin following the Messinian "Lago Mare" episode took place in a much more gradual way.[citation needed]

See also[edit]
Black Sea deluge hypothesis
Lake Manych-Gudilo
Outburst flood
Paratethys

Link to video.

 

[Silurian]

I saw a program on British TV a few years ago, most likely BBC, about the Washington flood in your link which was quite interesting.

From Nature

The island that is now England, Scotland and Wales was severed from continental Europe by a cataclysmic flood during the last ice age, according to a group of researchers based in Britain.

http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070716/full/news070716-11.html

 

[schlaufuchs]

And what exactly do you want us to discuss?

 

[Wrymouth3]

abradley, you do a great job convincing me about the fallacy that is global warming.

 

[warpus]

About 18,000 years ago, the Earth began to warm substantially.

I'm sure that's what the media would like you to believe. Prehistoric global warming is a myth.

 

[abradley]

Should have included this in the OP, in the linked article, there's this:

Liquids have some interesting properties. One of them is that as they become more saturated with entrained solids and so become denser, they are able to support heavier objects in their flow. Boulders have been known to surf along sitting on top of lahars, volcanic mudflows initiated by erupting volcanoes. So as the flood becomes more turbid, it can lift heavier rocks. The pressure it exerts on objects increases as the square of its velocity, so water moving 4 times faster exerts 16 times more force. So a dense flow that is moving very fast can move enormous pieces of rock and debris.

When I think of boulders being moved by water, my imagination see a boulder being tumbled along on the on the bottom of the flow, this ain't what's at work here, here the boulder surfs the flow. So at about 10:30 there's a boulder that may have surfed it's way to it's final resting spot.

Link to video.

Trees, cars, houses, yah, we've all seen that ... but a boulder, I'd like to see that (as long as no one was harmed).

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Should have included this in the OP, in the linked article, there's this:When I think of boulders being moved by water, my imagination see a boulder being tumbled along on the on the bottom of the flow, this ain't what's at work here, here the boulder surfs the flow. So at about 10:30 there's a boulder that may have surfed it's way to it's final resting spot.

Trees, cars, houses, yah, we've all seen that ... but a boulder, I'd like to see that (as long as no one was harmed).

For some reason the video won't play here, but I watched on YouTube. It's very interesting to think about all the things you see around outside the cities but just take for granted.

 

[Zelig]

Not about Global Warming, just interesting:And while on the subject of Floods, if this happened, it must have been spectacular:


Link to video.

This is dumb.

 

[abradley]

For some reason the video won't play here, but I watched on YouTube. It's very interesting to think about all the things you see around outside the cities but just take for granted.

Yes, I was into bird watching for a while, (not in Thailand, if a bird stands still long enough to be watched it'll get eaten by the locals) and got to see a lot of terrain outside the cities.

Well back on subject the guy who sez the rocks floated also sez they rode icebergs (6:15):

Link to video.

The old man is getting mixed up.

Am enjoying the series, hope others are also.

This is dumb.

Why is it dumb?

 

[Archbob]

Why is it dumb?

Silly, the earth is only 6000 years old.

 

[abradley]

Silly, the earth is only 6000 years old.

True, but 'Let's pretend.'

 

[Zkribbler]

Thanks for posting this abradley. Although I knew this all before [except for the "potholes" it is good to get a refresher course.

BTS: The waterfall resulting from the rupture of the Bosporus barrier supposedly produced the loudest natural sound ever heard by humans.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

I doubt it was as spectacular as the video suggests. Plates move at mm/year speeds. So probably it statrted by filtrations, then little apportations with every high tide until the barrier eroded and a more continuous flux started. The whole process taking 100s or 1000s of years. It could also have happened in the cataclismic way the video says due to a huge earthquake breaking the istmus alltogether but nature is usually more patient than that.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Not about Global Warming, just interesting:And while on the subject of Floods, if this happened, it must have been spectacular:

It is an estimated "rapid" climate change of around 6 Degrees over 10,000 years or 0.06 C per century. This occurs once every 100,000 years
Can you tell me right now how rapid our current climate is changing vs the past ?

 

[abradley]

It is an estimated "rapid" climate change of around 6 Degrees over 10,000 years or 0.06 C per century. This occurs once every 100,000 years
Can you tell me right now how rapid our current climate is changing vs the past ?

As posted. "Not about Global Warming, ..."

Does every thread have to be about 'Global Warming?'

 

[timtofly]

I'm sure that's what the media would like you to believe. Prehistoric global warming is a myth.

Which is better; myth or arrogance?

@ abradly
Most threads that deal with past events end up being about some posters favorite topic.

Modern humans will have to live through rapid climate changes, else they are just myths, and or speculations. Then they try to take credit for the abilities that only happen naturally, or divine intervention.

I will grant them the fact, humans can manufacture unnatural elements like plastics that have a longer half life than most natural elements.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I've enjoyed the video, especially the one about the Grand Coulee.

 

[Berzerker]

Noah's Flood submerged the Garden of Eden, or its one time location... Thats the Persian Gulf, not the Black Sea.

 

[Wastl]

Yes, I was into bird watching for a while, (not in Thailand, if a bird stands still long enough to be watched it'll get eaten by the locals) and got to see a lot of terrain outside the cities.

Well back on subject the guy who sez the rocks floated also sez they rode icebergs (6:15):

The old man is getting mixed up.

Am enjoying the series, hope others are also.

You can actually add another point to that
The glaciers and ice shields moved colossal amounts of these rocks while extending during the ice age, and left them behind when retreating. In other words: to a large extend all the erratic material was moved by the ice itself. In some occasions it ended up being transported further by icebergs that broke off, or by floods from glacial lakes breaking through a barrier, like here with the channeled scablands in Washington.

Northern Germany, Poland, etc. are overflowing with rocks that originated in Scandinavia, and which were transported from there by advancing ice that reached its furthest extend in that area. Well, technically it went back and worth all the time, but that's a different matter

 

[Silurian]

Wind blown deposits (Loess) also shapped the landsape in many places.

From USGS

Many Americans think of Iowa as having little topographic variation. However, in westernmost Iowa the Loess Hills rise 200 feet above the flat plains forming a narrow band running north-south 200 miles along the Missouri River. The steep angles and sharp bluffs on the western side of the Loess Hills are in sharp contrast to the flat rectangular cropfields of the Missouri River flood plain. From the east, gently rolling hills blend into steep ridges.

Loess (pronounced "luss"), is German for loose or crumbly. It is a gritty, lightweight, porous material composed of tightly packed grains of quartz, feldspar, mica, and other minerals. Loess is the source of most of our Nation's rich agricultural soils and is common in the U.S. and around the world. However, Iowa's Loess Hills are unusual because the layers of loess are extraordinarily thick, as much as 200 feet in some places. The extreme thickness of the loess layers and the intricately carved terrain of the Loess Hills make them a rare geologic feature. Shaanxi, China, is the only other location where loess layers are as deep and extensive. Though much older (2.5 million years) and much thicker (nearly 300 feet) than Iowa's loess, the Shaanxi loess hills have been greatly altered by both natural and human activity and no longer retain their original characteristics.

http://pubs.usgs.gov/info/loess/