The Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism (2018)

Gollmer, S.M. 2018. Effect of aerosol distributions on precipitation patterns needed for a rapid Ice Age. In Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism , ed. J.H. Whitmore, pp. 695-706. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Creation Science Fellowship. EFFECT OF AEROSOL DISTRIBUTIONS ON PRECIPITATION PATTERNS NEEDED FOR A RAPID ICE AGE Steven M. Gollmer , Cedarville University, 251 N. Main St., Cedarville, OH 45314, gollmers@cedarville.edu ABSTRACT Introduced in the Genesis Flood by Whitcomb and Morris (1961) and fleshed out by Oard (1979) a model for an ice age in the wake of the Genesis flood was used to explain the evidence of glaciation in Canada and the United States without resorting to eons of time. It was proposed that this rapid ice age was the consequence of post flood warm oceans, barren land and volcanic aerosols. The impact of warm oceans was simulated by Vardiman (1998) and Gollmer (2013) using climate models. Although warm oceans increase precipitation in the Arctic, global surface temperatures become unbearably hot unless volcanic aerosols equivalent to the eruption of Toba are used. In addition, with ocean temperatures of 30 ˚C the formation of snow and ice are impossible because air and land temperatures in the Arctic remain above freezing. Using dynamic oceans with a uniform initial temperature of 24 ˚C, climate simulations are performed to explore the impact of aerosol distributions on the position of the jet stream and storm tracks. In previous simulations, precipitation in the Arctic is primarily over the ocean rather than land, thus limiting how quickly ice sheets are able to grow. Although the simulations reported here are still too warm for the accumulation of snow, it is clear that the thermal circulation coming off a cold continent must be offset by other factors in order for sufficient precipitation to fall inland. KEY WORDS climate modeling, Ice age, post-Flood, warm ocean, sea-surface temperature, aerosols, precipitation, winds Copyright 2018 Creation Science Fellowship, Inc., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA www.creationicc.org 695 INTRODUCTION Much has been written about the Flood that occurred in the time of Noah. During the mid-nineteenth century the scriptural geologists responded to the writings of Lyell (1833) and Buckland (1858), which pulled away from a belief that there was scientific evidence for a universal flood (Mortenson, 2004). Price’s The New Geology (1923) renewed interest in flood geology. However, it was the landmark book, The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and Its Scientific Implications (Whitcomb and Morris, 1961), that revitalized scientific scholarship related to the global flood recorded in Genesis 6-8. With a distribution over ten times that of Price’s book it has shaped creationist research for the past half century. Although a number of alternate theories have been proposed for explaining geological features, many productive hypotheses used by creationist today are delineated in this book. One hypothesis relates to Agassiz’s conclusion that geological features formerly attributed to the Flood were better explained through a series of ice ages. Agassiz founded the study of glaciology with the publication of Etudes sur les glaciers (Agassiz, 1840). Whitcomb and Morris agreed that there was geological evidence for a post-flood ice age, but proposed a much shorter time frame for its occurrence. Feasibility of a rapid ice age was presented by Oard (1979) and used the mechanisms proposed by Whitcomb and Morris (warm oceans, large amounts of volcanic aerosols and denuded land from the flood). His calculations result in an ice sheet reaching a depth of over 400 m within a time period of 500 years. Additional details about post-flood glaciation and the rapid ice age model can be found in Oard (1990). In order to test Oard’s proposal through numerical simulation, Vardiman adapted the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Community Climate Model 1 (CCM1) to run on a personal computer. Spelman (1996) used this model to test its sensitivity to warm oceans. Holding the surface temperature of the ocean at 30 ˚C, Spelman observed peak precipitation rates of 40 mm/ day near the North Pole. Vardiman (1998) reported on simulations that placed ocean hot spots over the Mid-Atlantic ridge. Enhanced precipitation occurred down-wind of the hot spots and there was an observed shift in the wind patterns. Gollmer (2013) reproduced the work done by Spelman using the Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) ModelE. Although Gollmer’s simulations reported half as much precipitation, this is due to averaging results over the month rather than reporting a single day statistic. Gollmer (2013) also reported on simulations with a dynamic ocean and enhanced aerosols. Although the simulation began with a uniform temperature of 30 ˚C throughout the depth of the ocean, after five years the surface temperature of the polar ocean dropped to 24 ˚C with temperatures near 0 ˚C at the continental margins in the Arctic Ocean. These colder temperatures were a residual from the inability to remove land ice from the simulation. More concerning were the 40 ˚C sea surface temperatures near the equator. In order to offset the additional heat source provided by the warm ocean, stratospheric aerosols from volcanic eruptions were uniformly added over the globe. Aerosols trap infrared radiation from the surface, but reflect an even greater amount of solar radiation in the visible spectrum. As a result, there is a net cooling effect. Various amounts of aerosols were simulated and the conclusion was that an optical depth of 2.0 was necessary to reduce equatorial ocean temperatures to 32 ˚C. This amount of volcanic activity corresponds to a Toba scale event sustained over multiple years. For context, it is estimated that Toba released 20x the stratospheric aerosols as the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora,