This story continues to blow my mind! I'm 43 years in Santa Barbara CA, land of billionaires and imminent doom, mining Cali gold (construction worker). Having grown up near Mondovi, then the Okanogan delta (Brewster), your story is dear to my very soul Jerome.
Wow. Brilliant. Somehow, I missed this at the time, but it's really helpful now. I've copied parts of Livingstone et al. 2022, so thanks for that reference, too.
Your findings are exciting. Your presentation of those findings was excellent. Being from Wisconsin, I have to wonder if there might be other areas in the upper Midwest and Ontario that have similar subglacial origins.
Retired ag engineer from Manitoba. Work took me many places and, whether the features are spectacular or frumpy, the visible surface geology has always created questions. An aside; hydraulic hoses on ag machinery typically contain oil operating at anywhere between 1500 and 5000 psi. Yes, Imperial units, I’m old. Occasionally a pinhole will develop in a hydraulic hose and an extremely high pressure spray is released. These pinholes can be lethal. The spray volume can be tiny and look harmless. The unexperienced can be tempted to place a finger or a thumb over the hydraulic spray in the same way a thumb can be placed over a garden hose. The result is that hydraulic oil is injected into the body. Even momentary exposure can result in extreme bodily damage. Water flowing at the earth/ice interface, with a glacial overburden of plastic ice, is also flowing at very significantly increased pressures. The plastic iceflow of the interface ice itself also occurs at these very high pressures. The erosional power of this interface ice and water may not be totally accounted for in current modelling. There is also a focus on mega-floods and catastrophic outbursts being the source of mega erosion, which necessarily occurs when glaciers are in retreat. Ice age weather likely had many polar/equatorial cycles. The surface topography of the glacier would have been continuously in flux. Surface basin proglacial lakes may have been possible during glacial advance or static periods as well as during decline. The vertical “outburst” of these lakes may have reached tremendous pressures at the basement level. Some of the erosional features may have been pressure washed into existence in days. In a way, they may have been similar to inverted volcanoes😳
Yep, three Metric Luddite countries left on the planet - Myanmar, Liberia and the USA. The USA PISA Math Scores are way down the ranking in 18th place, yet the Metric System is so logical and simple compared with the illogical Imperial System which could improve the Math capabilities of their students.
High pressures would tend to generate heat. But you need a damn nice source of heat to melt that much of the ice sheet into water way up north of the snout of the glacier. The evidence says huge flows came down gradient and bursted out of the front edge of the ice. Not to mention the drumlin fields, which we're not mentioned here. The energy paradox has not been solved. I'd venture that is because the answer involves impacts into the ice sheet and unGodly amounts of super hot flood water running over and under the glacier. Why did this most recent de-glaciation create these sort of catastrophic floods across the United States (and fires)? Something big happened to bring the last ice age to an end. What that something is has not been properly determined. At least not publicly.
This story continues to blow my mind! I'm 43 years in Santa Barbara CA, land of billionaires and imminent doom, mining Cali gold (construction worker). Having grown up near Mondovi, then the Okanogan delta (Brewster), your story is dear to my very soul Jerome.
Excellent. Trop.
Wow. Brilliant. Somehow, I missed this at the time, but it's really helpful now. I've copied parts of Livingstone et al. 2022, so thanks for that reference, too.
Your findings are exciting. Your presentation of those findings was excellent. Being from Wisconsin, I have to wonder if there might be other areas in the upper Midwest and Ontario that have similar subglacial origins.
Retired ag engineer from Manitoba. Work took me many places and, whether the features are spectacular or frumpy, the visible surface geology has always created questions. An aside; hydraulic hoses on ag machinery typically contain oil operating at anywhere between 1500 and 5000 psi. Yes, Imperial units, I’m old. Occasionally a pinhole will develop in a hydraulic hose and an extremely high pressure spray is released. These pinholes can be lethal. The spray volume can be tiny and look harmless. The unexperienced can be tempted to place a finger or a thumb over the hydraulic spray in the same way a thumb can be placed over a garden hose. The result is that hydraulic oil is injected into the body. Even momentary exposure can result in extreme bodily damage.
Water flowing at the earth/ice interface, with a glacial overburden of plastic ice, is also flowing at very significantly increased pressures. The plastic iceflow of the interface ice itself also occurs at these very high pressures. The erosional power of this interface ice and water may not be totally accounted for in current modelling.
There is also a focus on mega-floods and catastrophic outbursts being the source of mega erosion, which necessarily occurs when glaciers are in retreat. Ice age weather likely had many polar/equatorial cycles. The surface topography of the glacier would have been continuously in flux. Surface basin proglacial lakes may have been possible during glacial advance or static periods as well as during decline. The vertical “outburst” of these lakes may have reached tremendous pressures at the basement level. Some of the erosional features may have been pressure washed into existence in days. In a way, they may have been similar to inverted volcanoes😳
Wow trying to keep up with Jerome, and then having to try to convert the metric measurements. We should have gone metric years ago.
Yep, three Metric Luddite countries left on the planet - Myanmar, Liberia and the USA. The USA PISA Math Scores are way down the ranking in 18th place, yet the Metric System is so logical and simple compared with the illogical Imperial System which could improve the Math capabilities of their students.
Explains a lot. Would water under pressure be warmer than water on the surface?
High pressures would tend to generate heat. But you need a damn nice source of heat to melt that much of the ice sheet into water way up north of the snout of the glacier. The evidence says huge flows came down gradient and bursted out of the front edge of the ice. Not to mention the drumlin fields, which we're not mentioned here.
The energy paradox has not been solved. I'd venture that is because the answer involves impacts into the ice sheet and unGodly amounts of super hot flood water running over and under the glacier.
Why did this most recent de-glaciation create these sort of catastrophic floods across the United States (and fires)?
Something big happened to bring the last ice age to an end. What that something is has not been properly determined. At least not publicly.
Normal ice sheet melting that has resulted from climate warming doesn't produce high pressure mega-floods. Thanks.