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Summary: The Neoproterozoic Era

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The Neoproterozoic Era extends from 1000 million years ago to 542 million years ago. During the Neoproterozoic, the earth is believed to have been covered from pole to pole by glacial ice. These events are believed to have occurred twice during this era and are the most severe glaciations known to have happened on Earth. This phenomenon is often referred to as Snowball Earth. The first Snowball episode began around 715 million years ago and the second Snowball event is believed to have begun 630 million years ago. There are several theories that explain how these events occurred. Some of these theories include a rapid decrease in greenhouse gases due to uplift and weathering, the release of aerosols into the atmosphere and a decrease in solar output. Once the ice reaches a certain latitude, it continues to spread and increases the likelihood that glacial ice will cover the equator. …show more content…

There is evidence that suggests that along with rising carbon dioxide levels, volcanic dust may have been a large contributing factor in the deglaciation of Snowball Earth. Evidence supporting ice covered continents and oceans has been provided by deposits such as iron-manganese in glacial sediments. This indicates that the ocean was lacking oxygen and that there were probably glacial formations (Hoffman & Li, 2009). Simulations have shown that for atmospheric carbon dioxide to have been fully responsible for the termination of snowball Earth, the levels would have to have been about 550 times the present levels (Pierrehumbert, 2004). It is highly unlikely that the level of carbon

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One of the major events that affected the Earth’s climate simultaneously with the Maunder Minimum was the Little Ice Age, an interval of time between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries wherein mean annual temperatures in the northern hemisphere declined about 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit (Rafferty 1). The effects of the Maunder Minimum, wherein decreased sunspot activity indicated lower solar output, resulting in less solar energy warming the earth, have been argued to be the cause of the Little Ice Age, or were at the very least related to it. The effects of the Little Ice Age were felt across Europe and North America, impacting early settlements; wet springs led to flooding, hot summers were marked by devastating and extended droughts, and settlers suffered through intensely cold winters. As a result, and due to the fact that the European settlers were unfamiliar with North America’s growing season and environment, starvation and rampant disease was common among early settlements such as Jamestown and Roanoke (Wolfe 1). Tree-ring studies show that settlers at Jamestown, for instance, arrived at the beginning of a 7-year drought that was the area’s driest period in 770 years (Wolfe 2).

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(Steffen et al., 2011; Lewis and Maslin, 2015). There have even been numerous calls to recognise this influence by renaming the most geological epoch in humans’ honour”

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• It ended with the Ordovician, Silurian extinction event, about 443.8 Million years ago. Climate • During the first parts of the Ordovician the climate was fairly warm. • The land uplifted and continents moved around. • When Gondwana stopped its movement over South Pole, glaciers formed. • This caused the sea level to drop and climate to change.

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Snowball Earth is a long debated and controversial theory that a thick sheet of ice covers Earth in its entirety about 650 million years ago. The theory was first formed in the 1940s by Brian Harland after he learned of the existence of dropstones in the Arctic, and later discover that there are dropstones all around the world, even on the hottest continents and in the tropics. Harland hypothesized that ice spread to every continent with continental drift explaining the spread of dropstones, but this was swiftly rejected by scientists that viewed it as nonsensical and impossible. Russian scientist, Mikhail Budyko, later formed his own theory of Snowball Earth which was that the tropics could not freeze in practice, but could happen in theory.

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The quote written by James Hutton” The present is the key to the past”, is a good indication of how the old-earth viewpoint is viewed (Berggren & Couvering, 2014). The process can be weak and slow for a long period of time and then it can turn into a catastrophic

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