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Over a period of 50 years polar temperatures rise close to 60 degrees. There is also a rapid rise in methane levels in the atmosphere.
-- Ice cores suggest abrupt climate change 12,500 years ago By Paul Recer, Augusta Georgia/Associated Press, 10/02/98, http://www.augustachronicle.com/ |
This suggests that the lowered sea levels of the Ice Age (combined with perhaps a few other phenomena such as land slips) has resulted in a large scale release of methane hydrates from the sea floor into the atmosphere. This 'green house' gas would have helped warm the Earth rather suddenly, causing many glaciers to begin a rapid melting collapse, and sea levels to surge in height faster than before.
Substantial and highly flammable gas desposits line the ocean floor in many areas in a frozen, pressurized form, which might be on occasion released by meteor impacts, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, warm gaseous or liquid emissions from still deeper in the sea floor, warming of the oceans, or a reduction in sea levels (lower sea levels reduce the confining pressure, while warming thaws the icy deposits). Releases of gas from these deposits can be either highly localized or global in nature. Wherever sufficient quantities of this gas are released, the atmosphere itself may catch fire, sparked by events like natural lightning strikes. The gas may also contribute to global warming during releases, being a so-called 'green house' gas, which helps the Earth's atmosphere to retain solar heat.
-- METHANE HYDRATE: PAST FRIEND OR FUTURE FOE? From Science Frontiers Digest of Scientific Anomalies ["http://www.knowledge.co.uk/frontiers/"] #77, SEP-OCT 1991 by William R. Corliss, citing "Did Methane Curb Ice Ages," New Scientist, p. 24, May 25, 1991, and Tim Appenzeller; "Fire and Ice under the Deep-Sea Floor," Science, 252:1790, 1991 |