Younger Dryas impact hypothesis
Hypothesis on what initiated the Younger Dryas climatic period (stadial) / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis (YDIH) proposes that the onset of the Younger Dryas (YD) cool period (stadial) at the end of the Last Glacial Period, around 12,900 years ago was the result of some kind of extraterrestrial event with specific details varying between publications.[1]: Sec 1 The hypothesis is controversial and not widely accepted by relevant experts.[2][1][3]
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It is an alternative to the long-standing and widely accepted explanation that it was caused by a significant reduction in, or shutdown of the North Atlantic Conveyor due to a sudden influx of freshwater from Lake Agassiz and deglaciation in North America.[4][5][6][7][excessive citations] A 1997 analysis suggested that to create continent-wide damage a 4 km comet[8]: Fig. 1 direct impact would be required, or that the same damage could be caused by a smaller disintegrating comet airburst.[8]: Fig. 5 In 2007, the first YDIH paper[9] speculated that a comet airburst over North America created a Younger Dryas boundary (YDB) layer; however, inconsistencies have been identified in other published results.[1] And authors have not yet responded to requests for clarification and have never made their raw data available.[10][better source needed] Some YDIH proponents have also proposed that this event triggered extensive biomass burning, a brief impact winter that destabilized the Atlantic Conveyor and triggered the Younger Dryas instance of abrupt climate change,[9]: p. 16021 contributed to extinctions of late Pleistocene megafauna, and resulted in the disappearance of the Clovis culture.[11][12]