February 11, 2024
During Snowball Earth events, our planet was almost entirely covered by ice, but the trigger for this is unknown. Working with colleagues at Yale University and the University of Vienna, Associate Professor Dorian Abbot has published the most sophisticated test yet for the extraterrestrial impact hypothesis. Abbot writes, "We found that a Chicxulub-style impact can push Earth into a Snowball by kicking massive amounts of sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere, a gargantuan version of [some] geoengineering proposals, similar to what happened in the movie Snowpiercer. Crucially, this only works if the planet, in particular the deep ocean, is already cold like during the Last Glacial Maximum. If the planet is warm, as it is today, there is enough heat stored in the deep ocean to prevent it from going into a Snowball during the few decades when the cooling would be strong after an impact."
January 22, 2024
In Atlantic article "Prepare for a ‘Gray Swan’ Climate", Prof. Tiffany Shaw gives insight on gray swan events and their impact on how we look at climate change.
January 11, 2024
In the latest issue of Nature Geoscience, Prof. Edwin Kite, with collaborator Susan Conway (U. Nantes), suggest multiple climate transitions on Early Mars: https://rdcu.be/dvDdx