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Extreme winds and waves in the aftermath of a Neoproterozoic glaciation

Abstract

The most severe excursions in the Earth's climatic history are thought to be associated with Proterozoic glaciations. According to the ‘Snowball Earth’ hypothesis, the Marinoan glaciation, which ended about 635 million years ago, involved global or nearly global ice cover. At the termination of this glacial period, rapid melting of continental ice sheets must have caused a large rise in sea level. Here we show that sediments deposited during this sea level rise contain remarkable structures that we interpret as giant wave ripples. These structures occur at homologous stratigraphic levels in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Namibia and Svalbard. Our hydrodynamic analysis of these structures suggests maximum wave periods of 21 to 30 seconds, significantly longer than those typical for today's oceans. The reconstructed wave conditions could only have been generated under sustained high wind velocities exceeding 20 metres per second in fetch-unlimited ocean basins. We propose that these extraordinary wind and wave conditions were characteristic of the climatic transit, and provide observational targets for atmospheric circulation models.

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Figure 1: Sequence of sedimentary structures and lithologies in representative Marinoan postglacial cap carbonate sections.
Figure 2: Geometrical features and lamination styles of giant wave ripples in Marinoan post-glacial cap dolostones.
Figure 3: Cross-sectional view of an aggrading (climbing) wave ripple from the Keilberg cap carbonate of the Otavi Platform, northern Namibia.
Figure 4: Relation between wind speed, wave period and energy distribution.

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Acknowledgements

P.F.H. thanks the Arctic Natural Science and Earth System History Programs (NSF), the Astrobiology Institute (NASA) and the Earth System Evolution Program (CIAR) for supporting this work. We thank A. Bush, H. Daigle, C. Ferguson, W. Fischer, P. Halverson, A. Maloof, P. Myrow and S. Turchyn for discussions.

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Correspondence to Philip A. Allen.

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Allen, P., Hoffman, P. Extreme winds and waves in the aftermath of a Neoproterozoic glaciation. Nature 433, 123–127 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03176

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