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

which resulted in the year without a summer (Robock et al. , 2009; Robertson et al. , 2001). It is felt that the Toba eruption of ~74 ka B.P. (by secular measures) may have initiated the most recent ice age. Although climate simulations provide enhanced precipitation at the high latitudes due to warm oceans, this precipitation primarily falls over the ocean and near the continental boundaries. In order for ice sheets to form and grow the precipitation must penetrate the interior of the continent. One possible resolution to this problem is to use a mesoscale model that simulates weather over a region rather than the whole globe. A higher resolution model can capture the development of individual weather events, which may contribute more to ice sheet growth than sustained rates simulated at the global scale. Using this approach, Vardiman (2003) studied the development of a hypercane in the Gulf of Mexico. Vardiman and Brewer (2010a, 2010b) looked at the impact of winter stormpatterns on Yosemite National Park. For such a small spatial domain, the NCARWeather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF) was used, which simulates weather at different spatial scales. At the largest scale, which spans a region larger than the continental United States, each grid point is 27 km on a side. A higher resolution (9 km per grid point) is nested within the original and spans a region that is 2000 km by 1500 km. At the highest resolution (3 km per grid point) a region 650 km by 500 km is centered on Yosemite National Park. With the enhanced precipitation from warm oceans and a greater frequency of snow storm events these simulations indicate that glaciation in the Sierra Nevada can be explained in the context of the Genesis Flood and its aftermath. The WRF was used for additional studies over Yellowstone (Vardiman and Brewer, 2010c), the Middle East (Vardiman and Brewer, 2011) and the eastern United States (Vardiman and Brewer, 2012a and 2012b). Although these simulations provide insight into the effect that warm oceans have on storm dynamics, they are limited in their time domain. Simulations with resolutions from 30 km to 3 km may effectively capture sub-grid effects missed by global models of 600 km resolution; however, the duration of such simulations is on the order of days and weeks. These high resolution simulations capture episodic events, but assumptions must be made as to the frequency of these occurrences and their persistence through other seasons of the year. In addition, since mesoscale models are restricted to a region, the boundaries of the model must be specified. Using a nested-grid format helps mitigate this effect; however, the 27 km resolution region of the WRF must be nested within a global circulation model (GCM). Therefore, it is necessary to explore how the GCM responds to warm oceans and aerosols, which in turn can be used to establish the boundaries for the WRF or some other mesoscale model. In light of the issues raised, this paper focuses on the impact that stratospheric aerosol distribution has on global wind patterns. These winds in turn have an impact on precipitation patterns around the globe. This study will use the GISS ModelE2 AR5, which has double the resolution of AR4 used by Gollmer (2013). Since Gollmer concluded that 30 ˚C oceans resulted in temperatures too high for snowfall, dynamic oceans with an initial uniform temperature of 24 ˚C are used with various aerosol distributions. The remainder of this paper will address the following: 1) thermal circulation and the location of precipitation, 2) description of the current model and simulations, 3) aerosol distributions and their impact on wind patterns and 4) concluding discussion. THERMAL CIRCULATION AND PRECIPITATION To understand the challenge associated with achieving sufficient snowfall over continental interiors it is necessary to establish the basics of global wind circulation. There are four primary forces/effects that drive the winds of the earth: gravity, pressure gradient force, Coriolis effect and friction. Although it is obvious, gravity plays both a direct and indirect role in the motion of the atmosphere. The direct role is to attract the molecules of the atmosphere towards the center of the earth. Since gas molecules have energy of motion, they do not form a puddle of liquid at the earth’s surface, but an envelope of nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor and various other gasses with a height of 100’s of kilometers. The density of the atmosphere is greatest near the surface and 75% of the atmosphere’s mass resides within the first 16 kilometers from the earth’s surface. This layer is the called the troposphere and is where most of the phenomena we call weather occurs. Gravity has an indirect role as portions of the atmosphere warm and cool. Air over a warm surface expands and becomes less dense. As a result, gravity causes the more dense cold air to move horizontally over the warm surface and push the warm air upward. We observe that warm air rises and cold air sinks, but this is the result of gravity and the differential heating of surfaces. On a larger scale this differential heating results in warm and cold columns of air as illustrated in Figure 1a. Since the warm air is less dense, it extends to a greater height in the atmosphere than the cold column of air. If the pressure at the top of each column is the same, it is noteworthy that pressure changes at a slower rate with height in the warm column of air than in the cold column of air. As a result, high in the atmosphere, the warm air is at a higher pressure than the cold air. The pressure difference results in a pressure gradient force directed from high to low pressure and air flows from the warm to the cold column of air. As seen in Figure 1b, once air flows from the top of the warm column to the cold column, the surface pressure of the cold column increases and becomes greater than that of the warm column. This results in a pressure gradient force at the surface, driving air from the cold to the warm column. Once cold air at the surface moves over the warm surface, it warms and becomes less dense. Warm air transported to the cold surface cools and the circulation pattern perpetuates itself. On the global scale, differential heating causes the troposphere to be thicker at the equator than at the poles. A thermal circulation is established and we would expect a surface wind to blow from the pole to the equator and a return circulation high in the troposphere blowing from the equator to the poles. This does not occur because of the Coriolis effect and friction. The Coriolis effect is the result of Newton’s first law (an object in motion maintains constant straight line motion unless acted on by a net external force) and the rotation of the earth. As winds move in a straight line, the earth’s surface rotates from underneath it. As a result, it appears to someone standing on the surface that the winds are veering to the right in the Northern Hemisphere and to the left in the Southern Hemisphere. This effect along with frictional drag between the earth’s surface Gollmer ◀ Post-Flood Ice Age precipitation ▶ 2018 ICC 696