Long-term Environmental Effects of the Chicxulub Impact

Details Long-term Environmental Effects of the Chicxulub Impact Long-term Environmental Effects of the Chicxulub Impact

Mar 1996

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1996lpi....27...55b&link_type=abstract

Lunar and Planetary Science, volume 27, page 55

Physics

Chicxulub, Climate: Change, Cretaceous/Tertiary Boundary

Scientific paper

The impact of a large bolide into the northern Yucatan peninsula 65 million years ago resulted in unusually prolonged global environmental effects which caused the mass extinction that marks the K/T boundary. As previously discussed, the impact explosively released into the stratosphere about 100 billion tons of sulfur dioxide excavated from the the unusually sulfate-rich target rock, thereby producing a long-lasting reservoir of aerosol-generating material that severely affected the world climate. Here, we update our previous analysis of the evolution of the impact-generated stratospheric sulfur dioxide reservoir to explicitly account for (1) the large amount of water injected into the stratosphere from the Chicxulub site and (2) the diffusion of stratospheric gases back into the troposphere. We have also performed a preliminary analysis of the role of excavated salts in modifying the stratospheric abundance of ozone-destroying chlorine. Salient new results are: (1) water abundance did not limit the formation rate of stratospheric sulfuric acid hazes, (2) these reflective hazes - responsible for severe global cooling - lasted between ten and eighteen years (a marked decrease from the one-century upper limit, and (3) the stratospheric chlorine abundance increased by 1-2 orders of magnitude over the ambient concentration.

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