ESPEYB16 14. Year in Science and Medicine 2019 (1) (18 abstracts)
14.7. A large impact crater beneath Hiawatha Glacier in northwest Greenland
Kurt H. Kjær , Nicolaj K. Larsen , Tobias Binder , Anders A. Bjørk , Olaf Eisen , Mark A. Fahnestock , Svend Funder , Adam A. Garde , Henning Haack , Veit Helm , Michael Houmark-Nielsen , Kristian K. Kjeldsen , Shfaqat A. Khan , Horst Machguth , Iain McDonald , Mathieu Morlighem , Jérémie Mouginot , John D. Paden , Tod E. Waight , Christian Weikusat , Eske Willerslev & Joseph A. MacGregor
To read the full abstract: Sci Adv. 2018 Nov 14;4(11):eaar8173
The discovery of a 31-kilometer-wide impact crater in northwest Greenland, beneath up to a kilometer of ice, implies an instantly vaporizing rock that sent shock waves across the Arctic. Its impact must have had a powerful effect on global climate; a thousand-year global cooling event.
You may be familiar with the 200-kilometer-wide Chicxulub crater in Mexico, carved out by a dinosaur-killing asteroid 66 million years ago. Here, the authors report the discovery of a somewhat smaller impact crater beneath the Hiawatha Glacier in northwest Greenland. They identify a 31-kilometer-wide, circular bedrock depression beneath up to a kilometer of ice. Meltwater from the impact, pouring into the north Atlantic Ocean, could have markedly lowered temperatures by halting a conveyor belt of currents that brings warmth to northwest Europe. The crater was created by a fractionated iron asteroid, which must have been more than a kilometer wide. The more recent 12,000 years depth of ice is continuous and conformable, but all the deeper and older ice appears to be rich in debris and heavily disturbed. So, while the exact age of this impact crater is presently unknown, it might have occurred between 12,000 to 100,000 years ago, so that there is a chance that the event was seen by the new Americans who arrived from Asia 12,000 years ago, by European Neanderthals or by European modern men.
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