Global warming and ocean stratification : a potential result of large extraterrestrial impacts
Date
28/04/2017Author
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Abstract
The prevailing paradigm for the climatic effects of large asteroid or comet impacts is a reduction in sunlight and significant short-term cooling caused by atmospheric aerosol loading. Here we show, using global climate model experiments, that the large increases in stratospheric water vapor that can occur upon impact with the ocean cause radiative forcings of over +20 W m−2 in the case of 10 km sized bolides. The result of such a positive forcing is rapid climatic warming, increased upper ocean stratification, and potentially disruption of upper ocean ecosystems. Since two thirds of the world's surface is ocean, we suggest that some bolide impacts may actually warm climate overall. For impacts producing both stratospheric water vapor and aerosol loading, radiative forcing by water vapor can reduce or even cancel out aerosol-induced cooling, potentially causing 1–2 decades of increased temperatures in both the upper ocean and on the land surface. Such a response, which depends on the ratio of aerosol to water vapor radiative forcing, is distinct from many previous scenarios for the climatic effects of large bolide impacts, which mostly account for cooling from aerosol loading. Finally, we discuss how water vapor forcing from bolide impacts may have contributed to two well-known phenomena: extinction across the Cretaceous/Paleogene boundary and the deglaciation of the Neoproterozoic snowball Earth.
Citation
Joshi , M , von Glasow , R , Smith , R S , Paxton , C G M , Maycock , A C , Lunt , D J , Loptson , C & Markwick , P 2017 , ' Global warming and ocean stratification : a potential result of large extraterrestrial impacts ' , Geophysical Research Letters , vol. 44 , no. 8 , pp. 3841-3848 . https://doi.org/10.1002/2017GL073330
Publication
Geophysical Research Letters
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0094-8276Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2017 American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved. This work is made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the final published version of the work, which was originally published at: https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2017GL073330
Description
We acknowledge the support of resources provided by UK National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS), the High Performance Computing Cluster supported by the Research and Specialist Computing Support service at the University of East Anglia, UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), grants "CPE" (NE/K014757/1), and "Paleopolar" (NE/I005722/1). Data can be obtained from MJ on request. ACM acknowledges support from an AXA Postdoctoral Fellowship and the ERC ACCI grant Project No 267760, and NERC grant NE/M018199/1.Collections
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