PALEOFUTURE

Greenland

31-Dec-2009

Greenland Climate forcing sudden ice sheet collapse tipping point mitigation Study. An Environmental Parliament white paper, circa November 2009 The Greenland Ice Cap sudden slide into the Ocean is the issue and we have to use security measures to counter it's devastating effects. Clearly a Black Swan event waiting to happen - It is a security risk of the greatest magnitude for the United States and for the rest of the world. The Greenland Ice Cap's imminent, sudden and cataclysmic collapse is a repeat of PAST EVENTS in the Hudson Bay Ice Cap. Not only it is similar to the Hudson Bay Ice cap sudden collapse that led to the stories of Noah's Flood and cultural and religious myth throughout all of the earth's cultures - it is also a verifiable geologically proven rapid scale event. A singularity and a Complex theory examination is needed immediately. The speed and terrifying cataclysmic sea level rises after the Hudson Bay Ice Cap collapse, are well documented. The sudden slide of the whole Greenland ice cap into the sea will result in 7 to 17 meter sea level rises globally. It can and will happen literally overnight.... This collapse will lead to sea level rising OVERNIGHT and subsequent sea level rises will result in our repeating the cultural and religious histories existent, all across cultures and religions of this earth. Sadly this is going to be a repeat of the Floods but we aren't any more prepared than the contemporaries of Noe were. CHANGE IN HEAT TRANSPORTATION WITHIN THE GREENLAND GLACIER: SEASONAL MOULINS TO ACCUMULATIVE MOULINS The key problem in Greenland, is the recent switch-over from Seasonal Impact Moulins at the periphery of Greenland's ice sheet to Accumulative Impact Moulins; that reside at the high altitude, atop Greenland's sub-glacial interior depression. Until recently, virtually all moulins and crevasses formed along the margins of Greenland Ice Sheet where sub-glacial ground inclination is always seaward. Melt-water that falls through moulins or crevasses into ice takes with it the heat in it. At the edge of ice, this melt water (and heat in it) is quickly drained away from beneath ice sheet as the melt-water creeks soon poured out, taking the water and heat back to the sea when melting season comes to its end. Today, most melt is perhaps located across the sub-glacial water-divide that takes any water falling through the ice ever deeper towards Greenland's interior bowl. The dentures and crevasses on Greenland's sub-glacial bedrocks and soils get filled with this water and ice above starts to float on top of these ponds of water that conveniently smooths the trajectory with witch the bottom of Greenland's Ice Dome moves along the rock surface. As ice is an extremely good insulator, summer-time heat that falls with melt water stays under the ice here virtually forever (at least for all practical purposes). Therefore, these are Accumulative Impact Moulins and Crevasses as heat builds up summer-after-summer and is the only process where the greenhouse effect reaches 100% heat-retention. DOD or Army Corp of Engineers can create a project to pump water out from beneath the ice sheet thus accomplishing the multiple benefit of decreasing friction, reducing the spatial reach of the separating layer of water from between ice and rock and rooting the glacier once again. This would not only improve the ice sheet anchorage, or mooring, to the bedrocks, but pumping water out would, in theory, also help remove the ground heat as well. TRANSFORMATION OF POTENTIAL ENERGY OF MELT WATER TO MECHANICAL ENERGY As sad as it might be to think melting Greenland ice as destabilising; We must not forget that we have experienced the same processes in the distant geological past. When moulins and crevasses drain and generate, thin but, high-speed water jets under the ice dome, these water jets then cause the dreaded cavitation process which pulverizes bedrocks, and which has created a lot of the sandy beaches we all play at. And plenty of inert materials for the builders and the construction trade. On other occasions, large layers of water penetrate suddenly through ice when large melt water lakes drain themselves very suddenly through the entire height of the Greenland ice sheet. The plucking takes place where the rapidly falling water meets the bed rocks at the bottom of ice. Instead of pulverising the bed rocks into fine-grain sands, the massive blasts of highly pressurised water lifts the entire ice sheet up much more than the steady creeks collecting and creating a floating ice cap as they are originating from a moulin with steady water input. The ice rises and a tall temporary cavern allows a thick blanket of the fast-moving water create a blast of rapidly moving flash-floods under the Greenland Glacier. The plucking is a rapid erosion force that quickly creates immensely large rocks that are often seen as post-ice age huge boulder piles or fields. The boulders often get stuck again into the bottom of the ice sheet when the temporary cavern spreads further out and the glacier thins away. These boulders can then be carried away much further than by any stream of water alone could quickly do. These huge boulders created by plucking under ice sheet may become ice-embedded and can be themselves transported hundreds of miles away by the sliding ice sheet. Sometimes underwater tornado-like currents form under ice that leads to the kolking, which (just like tornado in the air) can lift and remove large chunks of the underlying material. Persistent turbulent currents under the ice sheet create the giant's cauldrons and potholes (water pouring via moulins over extended periods of time, when drainage out is stable, can create localised plucking and kolking which drill these formations into hard granitic rocks). Where ice crashes without any pressurised, high-speed water jets, like at the terminus of glaciers (or sides of a glacier), moraine forms from the abrasive mixture of soil and moraine that is slowly pushed forward into piles, or ridges, by the moving glaciers.(1) IMPORTANCE OF SUB-GLACIAL LAKES OVER SPILLING WITH ICE SHEET FAILURE AS RESULT So, when Greenland Ice Sheet collapses by the various processes? The accumulation of melt water by the Accumulative Impact Moulins and Crevasses is absolutely vital factor. As more and more warm water pours in and warms ice sheet's base cumulatively, further melt is ever easier by the Accumulative Impact Moulins pouring water in year-on-year. A situation would eventually arrive where Greenland's Ice Dome base below sea level would all be turned into water, topped by ice. But the melt water lake cannot indefinitely thicken under the ice sheet without this system becoming rapidly chaotic and unstable. The melt water lake within Greenland's interior depression bowl, under the ice dome, need not reach sea table, nor exceed it, for the "ice sheet thrust" to occur: the bottom of Greenland's ice dome will never sail atop a flat water table. If it were so, we would be safe and have several centuries to await for the instability to occur if all bottom half of ice had to melt to the level of sea table and this flat pool of water was topped by the remaining ice sheet neatly floating on a flat water surfaces as if occurring on open seas or lakes. No. As the melt water is created from the bottom of ice sheet, the edges of this subglacial melt lake water is pushed very rapidly and firmly up, the surface of this subglacial lake bent along its edges inside Greenland interior bowl, along the interfaces of rock and ice. Just like the ice bergs float in open water with only the smallest part of approximatelly 1/8 visible above the sea's surface, the glacial melt process isn't visible much to us in a reverse phenomenon. Once started, the rise of water table on this sub-glacial melt-water lake (that is squeezed between bed rock and ice) rises extremely rapidly along the ice-rock interface as the layer of water is not thick, but spread out in three dimensions along the interface. Very soon, this melt water lake surface reaches and exceeds the sea level when the final ice sheet slide out occurs. What once may appear that there is huge amount of depth left in this thin melt water lake under the ice sheet, it is very quickly pushed up to sea level and above on the very limited space of the ice-rock interface before the ice sheet land containment failure finally occurs. This is not a matter of centuries, not even years, but coud be a season or even a week or a day... Because once the melt-water warmed Greenland ice sheet starts a rapid melt water accummulation along its very bottom... the tipping point will have been exceeded. Literally tipping and sliding the largest Ice Cap known to man (above land) into the sea will cause a replay of Noah's floods in the post Biblical Times. Could be tonight. Or even... Today PS: The drainage of melt water under the glacier, should help. I have not yet come up with appropriate mechanism of how to pump the water out in large enough quantities... But this is an engineering problem that can be solved with concerted professional effort. When I was in Greenland with Jane Lubchenko as spokesmen for the Environmental Parliament in the symposium "Arctic - Mirror of Life" that was convened by H.E. Kofi Annan and H.E. Jose Manuel Barroso, the native Indians and the resident Greenlanders came to tell us, that they felt their ice age is ending. But there are many ways for it to end. But to them it appeared that most of the ways the Greenland Ice Cap will end, seemed to be rather fast and speedy.Based partly on the local Indian cultural histories and partly in science and geological evidence. There is no more important issue than the ice in Greenland as there is the impending switch-over to post-sea ice conditions taking place in the Arctic Ocean nearby: even the winter sea ice is much reduced (due to the thin ice being as easily compressible into pack ice as a deflating harmonica folds upon itself). In the past the old multi-year sea ice did not pile-up so easily as this year's thin sea ice. I remain of the opinion that 2010 might see Arctic sea ice gone by the end of summer due to the ice pile-up, larger waves &, sea winds scattering ice onto open and warmed-up seas. Perhaps much more important than the melting volume in Greenland is where it occurs: If the ice melts in Greenland's periphery, all melt water (and heat in it) drains away quickly when the melt season ends. (These are seasonal-impact moulins and crevasses.) However, now the melting occurs much higher on the ice dome where the sub-glacial ground surface inclination turns inward and where the melt water sinks ever deeper into Greenland's interior depression, filling the uneven dentures and crevasses by water. This lifts up ice dome as it floats above rough surfaces: mooring to the ground is quickly replaced by sailing on the ground. Mooring of the ice then located at the downstream obstacles only. As ice is a very good insulator (Greenlanders, build well insulated snow-houses) the heat that is taken down with the water that pours in through moulins and crevasses takes heat with it for ever. (These are accumulative-impact moulins and crevasses - a greenhouse effect with 100% heat retention as most of this water takes thousands of years to make its way ultimately towards and out of Melville Bay depression in North West Greenland.) The tipping point in Greenland's ice mooring has been crossed as each year a new gulp of warm water is added to the base of ice sheet (since the start of accumulative impact moulins and crevasses started to form at higher altitudes in Greenland the last few years). Because of this loosening of the footing of Greenland's ice dome by melt water incursion, we monitor the coastal barrier stability at Melville Bay by GPS meters in case the increased pressure destabilises this section and "ice sheet thrust" re-occurs to break ice loose here. We are also looking at sub-glacier high velocity water jets that cause cavitation, plucking and kolking under the ice shelves that are feeding turbidic mud and rock flows into Melville Bay basin and how these cause fast erosion on the rock barrier holding back the ice sheet. We either fly in with military helicopters from Thule-Pituffik base in extreme North West, or use civilian aircraft from Ilulissat airport that is south from Melville Bay. We think there are several sections that are already in a macro-scale movement towards the sea and our aim is to capture this movement by GPS. We aim for an amicable settlement with the Danish authorities and co-operation (rather than deploy citizen cover journalists to observe this). I am almost certain that if we do reach agreement over this matter soon as it is no interest of the Danish government to try to stop our United Nations'-based enquiries even if they think Greenland ice sheet land containment failure by "ice sheet thrust" at Melville Bay is no risk. We also have a great deal of support internally in Greenland to challenge the idea that the ice melts 15,000 years or 1,000 years, and support from the World Indigenous Nations that the sea floods do occur suddenly as the ice domes loose their footing and slide into the seas. We do hope the Indians are wrong and the Western idea of the ice sheets melting peacefully in situ over many millennia would be right. But for us Greenland appears as the snow roof of the world and when spring comes, only few drops of water comes out and then the whole snow sheet falls down from roof. Thus, if the ice age in Greenland ends soon, it is sad to see us so unprepared for this big flood and associated rapid "the Last Dryas" cooling as the United Nations' General Assembly was warned by the First Nations of the North America under the auspices of World Indigenous Nations Summit as its closing plenary investigation request plea for the UN. Let's see if the Danish have guts to delay our geophysical experiments further, although no one wish to see the indigenous people's idea (or fear) of "ice sheet thrust" occurring to bring the ice age in Greenland to its end: less than 1% melts, more than 99% slides out. It is an issue that needs to be discussed with the Top levels of DARPA and DOD. They understand the threat and the possible scenarios for Mitigation. We have been lobbying the Administration, but just with Lubchenco and Holdren and others... who side with the prevailing Victorian era wisdom of the geologists and Earth scientists who think this Greenland Ice Cap melting event will take place at glacial speeds of hundreds of years, and therefore no need to worry right now. However we also glaciers can move faster than lightning... and unannounced. And we know that Black Swan events also happen suddenly. And most importantly they always catch us unawares.... However there are defences and mitigation technologies available if we decide to act now. We can document the process and investigate deeply and if found to be warranted - then we can build Dams and defences and river drainages and many more smart and effective glacier movement slow down mechanisms.... However : Who can understand and deal with this? Only the professional security forces, the army, the NOAA and maybe the Royal society. However the Army Corp of Engineers can actually do things. They are the only ones who can do projects of the scale of geoengineering needed urgently. A scale of sophistication and engineering excellence to create underglacier melt water river drainages and re-secure the foundations of the Glacier to slow down the eventual slide out. Please keep in mind that a 2C warming in the temperate zones can translate to up to 15c in the Arctic and the Greenland zone And then.... The Floods

Paleofuture

11-Sep-2009

The Paleofuture theory was developed by Pano Kroko and is supported by the Environmental Parliament Media Science centre and advising earth scientists of EP. The PALEOFUTURE theory is simply the future repeating the past. The future of our geological, oceanic and atmospheric changes along the same lines of the ancient cataclysmic memories. Most religions, cultures and most peoples have memories and mythologies of Floods. Today these floods are caused by the extremely rapid glacial Ice caps and ice sheets, melting. Global warming, ice cap calving and sliding off glaciers into the oceans will cause cooling and will also be flooding the great cities of our earth. The floods that Noah's story and many others first people's genesis stories commemorate is nothing but our future reality. The Hopi Indians and the world's indigenous peoples, placed a question in front of the UN about just such an event being repeated due to earth's warming caused by CO2 emissions increases. The UN inquiry in 1992, was left unanswered and this EP initiative along with the creation of the PALEOFUTURE theory is an effort to rekindle the scientific community to research and test this theory and in essence prevent the same cataclysmic consequences of being repeated in the near future.
Paleofuture theorizes that the future rapid floods will be sudden and flooding will occur in hours as opposed to established scientific thinking that it will take months and years if not decades for these changes to occur. The first nations memory and the earth science
evidence of sunken pre historic cities indicates the floods covering cities in a matter of hours. We speak of sea level rises of 30-40 meters when the Greenland ice cap slides off into the Atlantic ocean.
According to the historical and geological record, the Greenland ice cap will move as fast as the Hudson ice cap did in the last ice age.
The speed of the moving glacier is that of a speeding automobile when it is well lubricated from the water melting underneath in it's
morphology bowl and then it floats off into the sea complete...

PALEOFUTURE needs to be tested and examined as any theory. But the Greenland ice cores need to be examined for the willow branch evidence of previous rapid warming-cooling glacial and atmospheric geological
historical records. The UN initiative of Paleofuture from the EP is a good move forward. Calling on all Ambassadors to the UN and Scientific
ambassadors to support it.
Paleofuture is simply the fact that NOTHING IS NEW UNDER THE SUN. But we will be well advised to be prepared for the repetition of the
cataclysms. Noah built his ARK. What are we going to build?

In the year 1992 at the General Assembly of the United Nations, there was the issue of the Ancient people's memory scenarios raised by the first nations of South Western nations of the North America. These Indian leaders from USA petitioned the UN to hear the question, but to this day remains unanswered. The Environmental Parliament will bring the Initiative directly to the UN assembly by forming a Coalition of UN member states to support and address the PALEOFUTURE initiative.

On their 1992, question and subsequent complaint to the United Nations' General Assembly, World Indigenous Nations Summit pleaded for the UN to investigate as several of their members project their ancient native history against the advances and retreats of the ice on North American continent.

Their position is that the glaciation period was fast and according to Hopi Nation the sea never quite rose back to the level it had been before the glaciation event occurred, hence the expectation of another sea level rise mayhem taking place and resulting human chaos what the 1992 summit expected then to be about 20 years ahead.

The position is, therefore, that the glaciation occurred due to geothermal fluctuations within the Mid Atlantic Ridge and the Iceleand Jan Mayen section in particular where large volcanic eruptivity rapidly warmed the sea to cause vapourisation and huge snow landfall.

UNGA complainants label this as "Mega-Surtsey" event, after the 1963 island-forming erupution near Vestmannayar islands south west of Iceland. The scale of eruption was much bigger and thus the volume of vapourised sea water.

Before the onset of the hypothetical eruptive activity, carbon-14 levels in the athmosphere were prevailing more or less same as at present. However, during the volcanic eruptions there were large amounts of carbon-12 and carbon-13 entering either sea water or air in the eruptions.

Later, when the sea levels dropped 126 metres, the methane clathrate deposits around the world destabilised releasing millions of years old carbon into athmosphere. There are 22,000 methane clatrate craters on the Arctic Ocean seabeds, the largest one being 750 km2. This injected the air with fully depleted carbon, while the oceans (aside eruptive areas) were much colder and biologically active removing huge amounts of CO2 leading to temporary carbon-14 dilution in a proportion of athmospheric CO2 (the Litvinenko Void versus previous 'Litvinenko Doze of Radiation' to be found in subglacial Greenland biodetritus). As Beresovtsky, patron of Litvinenko, has been suggested to sponsor us, thus the name for his memory for the high radiation doze that shouldn't be there if the Western ideas are right.

We have been told to distance from Beresovtsky that it would hurt our cause but at some point we were suggested million dollar fund from him and his associates.

The issue around the willow branch is that the Danish people seem to think that the Amerindian nations' recollections of the duration and the years must be wrong and they refused to have a carbon-14 run on mass spectrometer. We think this resembles Galileo-1610 when Pontificial Universitas Gregoriana and Paris Sorbonne refused to come and see Jupiter's moons go round Jupiter due to stronly perceived paradigms of time and people's unwilligness to swim against current.

We have suggested both bulk and intergrated samples to be mass-spectrometer run for short-life cosmogenic radioisotope carbon-14 which has a half-life 5,770 years. If any readings turn positive, the mesurement is either flawed or Greenland ice was formed fast as the native peoples and their native history experts of the North America insist.

In other words, if positive readings are made, Wally Broecker's, carbon-14 chronologies may have to be reworked. (I am not copying this message to anybody in Russia due to sensitivities of the few people and Lukashenko.) Hope this explains.

We are still not ready to put our case out and the geophysical footnotes for UNGA 101292 are behind schedule, not because of technical problems encountered, but we intend to work on voluntary basis to ensure that no-one says we are trying to benefit some how by creating a "climate-scare industry".

The essense of UN complaint is not age of ice age, but the other recollections that the ice dome on Hudson Bay never melted peacefully in situ when the ice age came to its end, instead it detached from its grounded moorings and fell off land suddenly and violently en masse, rapidly disitergrating into Atlatic Ocean and producing the Youngest Dryas cooling.

So, the worry and expectation is that the Greenland Ice Dome will now do the same, soon after the Arctic Ocean sea ice is gone, some of the First Nations of North America suggest that this could occur as soon as year after next, certainly within years after the Arctic Ocean and North Pole becomes ice-free and the sea has warmed up just few summers.

I can't tell you when the geophysical footnotes to the United Nations' General Assembly complaint are ready. I have been cosuming time for us to raise funds to make own holes, if we do not reach agreement or if there are genuine contamination that cannot be solved from samples. We also have other experiments that do not require this, but reveal same thing using a different methodology.

We also think that if it were proven that the ice domes never melted but they suddenly slid into oceans, this makes people far more worried and ready to take drastic and painful actions if the low laying regions get suddenly inunadated by water. Also, the mitigation of consequences of such an event is far better if one is prepared than unprepared.

====================================================================================================

The complainant nations informed me today that we have been offered a meeting with the former President of the United States, His Excellency Bill Clinton in September 2009.

I suggest that Indianice Geophysical Research Group has a conference so that we put up a coherent and well-made case presentation of the United Nations General Assembly dispute.

It is also pertinent to raise the prospect of utilising geoengineering and other methods if the outcome of the investigations prove our way, thus making the climate risk even bigger.

In my view, if it came to be discovered that the ice sheets never melted, but slid into sea, causing the sudden sea level jumps, as per 270 complainant nations, 50 times bigger "New Orleans" at hand should make even the most reluctant person into action to minimise chaos.

We are not giving answers in advance, but if "the Floods", as recorded by the indigenous nations from 5 continents and many islands of the seas, come to be proven as result of the warmed and wet ice sheets suddenly loosing their footing on elevated terrain, sliding and falling off to the seas, the attempts to prevent the instability of terrestrial ice sheets will make an excellent case for rapid emissions' cuts and use of geoengineering making it far more imperative than just saying that by year 3,000 we may loose Greenland ice dome.

The Three Main Paleofuture Experiments (Ice Sheet Land Containment Failure Risk) are:

The Sunken Cities of the Arabian Sea (the selected conurbations lie between 30-120 metres below sea surface), did the rising sea cause erosion if sea rose gradually by ice sheets melting peacefully away [paradigm of the Western Nations] or did the warmed and wet ice sheets suddenly loose their footing on the elevated terrain and massively slide into sea to raise sea surface rapidly high enough to preserve the Sunken Cities as "Pompeii in Water".
The Indigenous nations' climatic annals that are suggestive of a large precipitation in the south with perennially overcast skies, and in the north an endless snowfall due to Icelandic Hot Spot and the Mid Atlantic Ridge gushing hot rocks in a tight feedback loop, which made pressures under continents increase massively and sea floor pressures decrease, volcanic flows perpetuating the suggested rain and snow fall. The heated sea water then ending up as a continental snow load. The pre-glaciations era biomaterials produce a positive carbon-14 reading if complainant nations give right number of years for the "Geothermal Mega-Surtsey" event, or is negative if Milutin Milankovits' slow orbital forces built up the Greenland Ice Sheet. Carbon-14 content halves each 5,770 years easily distinguishing between the two.
The ground tomography tests to check out Melville Bay ice sheet land containment barriers stability, whether the tiny isthmus between the sea and Greenland Ice Dome is able to hold back the pressures that are emanating from the increasingly wet, soft and lubricated ice sheet that rests behind and above it. The ground elevation monitoring, the lateral outward movement of topographic points, tilt and tensions. Although the snow falls from the sky, on the ground the density of compressed snow settles at 850 kg/m3 and can only slide down and requires land containment failure to occur to get past the ice sheet land containment barrier at the periphery of Greenland ice dome.

If it came to be shown up that are destabilising Greenland's ice dome (and other ice domes) suddenly in the post sea ice Arctic Ocean, I would really curse mankind if we came to discover risk of sudden ice sheet slide outs but we still did not do any major action (but I think this would energise mankind to swing to swift actions if proved to be a true case).

If you are able to join the teleconference and have an interest, please get in touch. I just can't see any better opportunity to get climate action than huge sea level jumps if destabilised ice sheets start to slide en masse into seas like UN complainant nations put it.

It is very important to get the size of the "X-factor box" in climate change reduced to the absolute minimum and get all Paleofuture Climate Risk Class cases assessed experimentally if they are valid worries or not. (Paleofuture Risks, as agreed to the Environmental Parliament Group during the Alaska Indigenous Peoples - UN summit in April 2009 by the United Nations' General Assembly President, refer to re-occurrence of global warming events of which few obscure recollections remain among some nations that are suggested to have arisen during a "global warming period" at the end of the ice age, or during it, but which phenomena we do lack present-day experiences and observations).

I wished the Paleofuture Climate Risk's "X-Factor Box" is smashed and found to be full of air and unwarranted 'experiences' and worries, but until we test them, we simply do not know.

In the mean time, we at FIPC give all support for the great work various groups are doing in addressing the climate change from research, emissions, renewables, mitigation and geoengineering to make our life and climate as manageable as possible for global security.

With kind regards,

Albert Kallio

Plenipotentiary Member

Scientific Ambassador of the Environmental Parliament

Science Advisor to the Chairman of the Environmental Parliament
FIPC Co-ordinator

*********************************************************************

Frozen Isthmuses' Protection Campaign
of the Arctic and North Atlantic Oceans

Paleofuture - Rapid Cooling Proof Found - Launch of an Ice Age in just months

11-Sep-2009

Rapid changes in earth's climate are not only possible - they are provable. As an example the last ice age was launched in a space of a few months... JUST months - that's how long it took for Europe to be engulfed by an ice age. The rapid cooling scenario, was revealed by the most precise record of the climate from palaeohistory ever generated. Around 12,800 years ago the northern hemisphere was hit by the Younger Dryas mini ice age, or "Big Freeze". It was triggered by the slowdown of the Gulf Stream, led to the decline of the Clovis culture in North America, and lasted around 1300 years. Until now, it was thought that the mini ice age took a decade or so to take hold, on the evidence provided by Greenland ice cores. Not so, say William Patterson of the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, and his colleagues. The group studied a mud core from an ancient lake, Lough Monreagh, in western Ireland. Using a scalpel they sliced off layers 0.5 to 1 millimetre thick, each representing up to three months of time. No other measurements from the period have approached this level of detail. Carbon isotopes in each slice revealed how productive the lake was and oxygen isotopes gave a picture of temperature and rainfall. They show that at the start of the Big Freeze, temperatures plummeted and lake productivity stopped within months, or a year at most. "It would be like taking Ireland today and moving it up to Svalbard" in the Arctic, says Patterson, who presented the findings at the BOREAS conference in Rovaniemi, Finland, on 31 October. "This is significantly shorter than what has been suggested before, but it is plausible," says Derek Vance of the University of Bristol, UK. Hans Renssen, a climate researcher at Vrije University in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, says recent findings from Greenland ice cores indicate the Younger Dryas event may have happened in one to three years. Patterson's results confirm this was a very sudden change, he says. The mud slices from the end of the Big Freeze show that it took around two centuries for the lake and climate to recover. Patterson says that sudden climate switches like the Big Freeze are far from unusual in the geological record. The Younger Dryas was brought about when a glacial lake covering most of north-west Canada burst its banks and poured into the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. The huge flood diluted the salinity-driven North Atlantic Ocean mega-currents, including the Gulf Stream, and stalled it. Two studies published in 2006 show that the same thing happened again 8200 years ago, when the Northern hemisphere went through another cold spell. Some climate scientists have suggested that the Greenland ice sheet could have the same effect if it suddenly melts through climate change, but the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded this was unlikely to happen this century. Patterson's team have now set their sights on even more precise records of historical climate. They have built a robot able to shave 0.05 micrometre slivers along the growth lines of fossilised clam shells, giving a resolution of less than a day. "We can get you mid-July temperatures from 400 million years ago," he says. -- Regards Pano Kroko Environmental Parliament www.EnvironmentalParliament.org