Rapid sea level rise in the aftermath of a Neoproterozoic snowball Earth
A fast-melting snowball
The Marinoan “snowball Earth” glaciation covered most of the planet in ice. The surface melted only when enough carbon dioxide had accumulated in the atmosphere to trap the Sun's warmth. Melting must have occurred rapidly, but just how fast has been a topic of conjecture. Myrow et al. analyzed the wave ripples preserved in tidally deposited siltstones of the Elatina Formation, South Australia, to determine that sea level must have risen at the astounding rate of nearly 30 centimeters per year during the melting epoch, or roughly 100 times the rate that it is rising today.
Science, this issue p. 649
Abstract
Earth’s most severe climate changes occurred during global-scale “snowball Earth” glaciations, which profoundly altered the planet’s atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere. Extreme rates of glacioeustatic sea level rise are predicted by the snowball Earth hypothesis, but supporting geologic evidence has been lacking. We use paleohydraulic analysis of wave ripples and tidal laminae in the Elatina Formation, Australia—deposited after the Marinoan glaciation ~635 million years ago—to show that water depths of 9 to 16 meters remained nearly constant for ~100 years throughout 27 meters of sediment accumulation. This accumulation rate was too great to have been accommodated by subsidence and instead indicates an extraordinarily rapid rate of sea level rise (0.2 to 0.27 meters per year). Our results substantiate a fundamental prediction of snowball Earth models of rapid deglaciation during the early transition to a supergreenhouse climate.
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Supplementary Material
Summary
Materials and Methods
Figs. S1 and S2
Tables S1 to S3
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Science
Volume 360 | Issue 6389
11 May 2018
11 May 2018
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Copyright © 2018 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.
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Received: 3 September 2017
Accepted: 5 April 2018
Published in print: 11 May 2018
Acknowledgments
We thank the reviewers of this manuscript for their helpful and insightful reviews. We thank C. Rose, W. Fischer, and J. C. Creveling for discussions concerning the results of our work. Funding: This study was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation through award EAR-1225879 to P.M.M. and award EAR-PF-0846233 to R.C.E. Author contributions: All authors contributed equally to the study concept, data collection and analysis, and manuscript writing. Competing interests: The authors have no competing interests. Data and materials availability: All data are available in the manuscript or the supplementary materials.
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National Science Foundation: EAR-1225879
National Science Foundation: EAR-PF-0846233
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