Reading Assignment One:

ATMS 571: Advanced Physical Climatology Prof. D.L. Hartmann

Reading Assignment #1 Due Wednesday, October 4, 2000. Be prepared to lead/participate in class discussion about this topic.

SnowBall Earth:

Recently, the idea that the Earth has experienced global glaciations in the past has been revived. Your job is to write a two page outline summary of the evidence for global glaciation, plus what you believe the implications of this work are.

The primary references are:

Hoffman, P. F., A. J. Kaufman, G. P. Halverson and D. P. Schrag, 1998: A Neoproterozoic snowball earth. Science, 281, 1342-1346.

Other references are many. A few are included here, but you are not required to look at any of them:

Caldeira, K. and J. F. Kasting, 1992: Susceptibility of the early Earth to irreversible glaciation caused by carbon dioxide clouds. Nature, 359, 226-8.

Harland, W. B., 1965: Critical evidence for a great Infra-Cambrian glaciation. Geologische Rundschau, 54, 45-61.

Hoffman, P. F. and D. P. Schrag, 2000: Snowball earth. Scientific-American, 282, 68-75.

Hyde, W. T., T. J. Crowley, S. K. Baum and W. R. Peltier, 2000: Neoproterozoic 'snowball Earth' simulations with a coupled climate/ice-sheet model. Nature, 405, 425-429.

Jenkins, G. S. and S. R. Smith, 1999: GCM simulations of Snowball Earth conditions during the late Proterozoic. Geophys. Res. Lett., 26, 2263-2266.

Kirschvink, J. L., 1992: Late Proterozoic low_latitude global glaciation: The snowball Earth. The Proterozoic Biosphere. J. W. Schopf and C. Klein, Eds., Cambridge U. Press, 51-52.

Kirschvink, J. L., E. J. Gaidos, L. E. Bertani, N. J. Beukes, J. Gutzmer, L. N. Maepa and R. E. Steinberger, 2000: Paleoproterozoic snowball Earth: Extreme climatic and geochemical global change and its biological consequences. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., 97, 1400-1405.

McKay, C. P., 2000: Thickness of tropical ice and photosynthesis on a snowball Earth. Geophys. Res. Lett., 27, 2153-2156.

Vincent, W. F., J. A. E. Gibson, R. Pienitz, V. Villeneuve, P. A. Broady, P. B. Hamilton and W.-C. Howard, 2000: Ice shelf microbial ecosystems in the high Arctic and implications for life on snowball earth. Naturwissenschaften, 87, 137-141.