The secrets of the “muddy” Earth: Supersonic melting said goodbye to the last ice age

At the end of the last global ice age, the Earth’s rapid and intense deep freezing reached a natural threshold in climate change, causing the planet to thaw into a slushy state.

The Earth experienced an intense and rapid melting phase after the last global ice age. The first direct geochemical evidence of that muddy period called “ocean of the feather world” have now been revealed.

A recent study in PNAS revealed that the planet went through a phase of rapid and intense melting, after the last global ice age.

During the period called leaden oceanextraordinarily high levels of carbon dioxide (CO₂) triggered a massive meltdown on the planet, which was, until then, frozen.

As explained by , the last ice age occurred between 635 and 650 million years agoand was marked by a significant expansion of polar ice caps and a drastic reduction in global temperatures.

During this glacial period, the ocean surface froze, disrupting the water cycle and chemical weathering, an essential process of rock erosion that consumes carbon dioxide.

With the interruption of this cycle, the CO₂ began to accumulate in the atmosphereincreasing the greenhouse effect and gradually raising temperatures until the freezing cycle was catastrophically interrupted.

“It was only a matter of time before carbon dioxide levels were high enough to break the ice pattern. When it ended, it probably ended catastrophically,” he explained.

In a relatively short period of 10 million years, average global temperatures have risen from -45 to 48 degrees Celsius.

This warming did not result in a uniform melting of the polar ice caps. Instead, huge rivers of glacial water flowed towards the sea, mixing with the dense, salty water of the oceans.

On the sidelines of this new study, scientists examined carbonate rocks formed at the end of this ice age to test the “ocean plume” theory.

After analyzing the relative abundance of lithium isotopes in rocks, it was concluded that Freshwater geochemical signatures were strongest in coastal rocks than in those formed in deep, salty ocean waters – corroborating the theory.