The Azolla Event

[Piney]

@Doug1o29  @Carnoferox @Socks Junior

After seeing this stuff go wild with the warming trend and cover whole lakes and streams in one season I think it's quite possible. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event

 

[Carnoferox]

Very interesting Piney, I actually hadn't heard of this event before.

[Piney]

14 minutes ago, Carnoferox said:

Very interesting Piney, I actually hadn't heard of this event before.

We're working on some Eocene-Oligocene stuff. This got brought up as evidence for the massive cooling trend. 

I never knew about the Wiki article. 

[Doc Socks Junior]

Quite interesting! I typically think of restricted basins like this being more saline, but if you have the freshwater layer on top then it's plausible. Then again, I'm not an oceanographer by any stretch!

[Piney]

21 minutes ago, Socks Junior said:

Quite interesting! I typically think of restricted basins like this being more saline, but if you have the freshwater layer on top then it's plausible. Then again, I'm not an oceanographer by any stretch!

It might have been a species adapted to saltwater. The stuff is pretty hardy. It resists glyphosate. 

[Doug1029]

Interesting stuff.  I immediately start thinking of how we might tap into this as a means of reducing atmospheric CO2.  Might make terraforming earth cost-effective.  On the other hand, how do you stop it?

 

There is another explanation for the earth's cooling, though.  An overturning current in the Pacific would have carried warm water northward.  As it cooled, it would sink, drawing more warm water northward.  That cooling was brought about by transfer of heat in the water to the air, which then carried it eastward to Alaska and Canada, making them warm.  If something suddenly stopped that current, the result would be cooling on a grand scale.  What if that current were to start back up?

Doug

[Piney]

2 minutes ago, Doug1o29 said:

Interesting stuff.  I immediately start thinking of how we might tap into this as a means of reducing atmospheric CO2.  Might make terraforming earth cost-effective.  On the other hand, how do you stop it?

 

There is another explanation for the earth's cooling, though.  An overturning current in the Pacific would have carried warm water northward.  As it cooled, it would sink, drawing more warm water northward.  That cooling was brought about by transfer of heat in the water to the air, which then carried it eastward to Alaska and Canada, making them warm.  If something suddenly stopped that current, the result would be cooling on a grand scale.  What if that current were to start back up?

Doug

That was about the time of one of the super continent breakups. What if the current suddenly switched direction? 

[Doug1029]

1 minute ago, Piney said:

That was about the time of one of the super continent breakups. What if the current suddenly switched direction? 

The North Pacific Current circles the rim of the Pacific in a clockwise rotation.  What it was doing then, if it even existed, I don't know.

BUT:  the creation of deep water is most-efficient at the freezing point.  Sea ice is produced by fractional crystallization, a process in which the water freezes, but the salt doesn't.  The freezing process absorbs heat from the water, super-cooling it so that sea water beneath the ice may have a temperature as low as -1.5C.  This cold water is denser than the surface water and also contains more salt, making it heavier still.  If enough of it piles up, it begins to flow southward in a counter-current.

Evaporation from the water surface also aids in the creation of deep water.

The usual cold-water layer produced by this process did not form last year, for the first time since depth temps of the Bering Sea have been taken.  It is a problem for Arctic cod which use the cold water to escape from predators.  Do you watch "Deadliest Catch?"  They use Arctic cod as bait.  How this will affect the crabbing industry, I don't know.

At any rate, I'm guessing that Bering Sea water was not a big problem for Azolla.

Doug