Almost 18,000 years ago the last Ice Age was approaching its goal , but the satellite was still almost as cold as ever . Yet great part of the Southern Hemisphere experienced a sudden deglaciation , or loss of glass , something climate scientists have shin to explain . Now the find of immense volcanic eruption , lasting almost 200 year at just the correct time , have provide a likely answer .
If a major vent erupted as of late at 17,700 years ago in most of the world , we ’d probably have become familiar with its legacy long ago . But Mount Takahe lies under the West Antarctic Ice Sheet , making its preceding doings something of a mystery .
Using ice cores taken from across Antarctica , Dr Joseph McConnellof theDesert Research Institute , Nevada , happen evidence of very high rates of sulfur and rarefied earths , such as cerium , emitted over a catamenia of 192 years . The locating of the gamey compactness show the finger’s breadth at Mount Takahe , McConnell reported in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .
The event of these eruption can be seen in the geological phonograph record across the Southern Hemisphere , with glaciers retrograde in Patagonia and New Zealand , and increased summertime rain in Brazil .
McConnell and his conscientious objector - authors explained the connection by mark that the eruptions were rich in halogens – atomic number 9 and chlorine – free-base on the legacy they exit in the snow . The shot of so much of these gasses high into the atm would have feign the stratosphere in a similar but even more extreme way , as the CFC ( chemical substance contain C , chlorine , and fluorine ) were released prior to their banning by theMontreal Protocol . That is , the ozone level was gravely damaged , particularly over the South Pole .
The loss of ozone permit high energy UV ( UV ) light to reach the aerofoil of Earth . As our own legacy of ozone depletion has shown , increased UV radiation speeds up the western wind that whirl around around Antarctica , causing them to lurch closer to the pole . This , in play , has increased summertime rain at certain southerly latitudes , touch off the dismission of methane from wetland and a reduction in the carbon dioxide take in by the Southern Ocean .
All this greatly accelerated the slow warming already occurring as cycle in the Earth ’s orbit move us into an interglacial period of time . This led to a much faster personnel casualty of ice than would commonly be insure at the remnant of an frosting long time , particularly in the Southern Hemisphere . Even after Mount Takahe stop belch , its legacy depart the late Ice Age warmer than it would otherwise have been .
