The End of the Messinian Salinity Crisis

There are the gradual climactic changes - and then there are the cataclysmic. Analysis of a deep channel under the Strait of Gibraltar, discovered in the course of preparatory drilling for a new tunnel connecting Spain and Morocco, suggests that the Mediterranean may have filled up some 5 million years ago in less than two years - maybe even in a few months:

“In an instantaneous flash, the dry Mediterranean became a normal Mediterranean like we see it today,” says lead author Daniel Garcia-Castellanos of Spain's Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC) in Barcelona.

He and his colleagues calculate that at the height of the flood, water levels rose more than 10 meters and more than 40 centimeters of rock eroded away per day. The model also shows that 100 million cubic meters of water flowed through the channel per second, with water gushing at speeds of 100 kilometers an hour. Rather than a Niagara Falls-esque cascade from the Atlantic into the Mediterranean, the team’s results imply a torrent several kilometers wide at a fairly gradual slope....

The sea separated from the world’s oceans 5.6 million years ago and was desiccated by evaporation in a period geologists call the Messinian salinity crisis.

Luckily, 5.3 million years ago water from the Atlantic Ocean found a way back in to the drying seabed through what is now the Strait of Gibraltar between Spain and Morocco....

Using equations derived from observations of mountain rivers, the team of researchers modeled how the flood might have progressed: The flood started gradually, but as the sill between the Atlantic and the dry Mediterranean wore down, the rate of water flowing and rock eroding increased exponentially. As more water flowed over the sill, more rock wore away, allowing ever more water to spill in.

The calculations show an upper limit of two years for how long it took to fill the Mediterranean. But Garcia-Castellanos says it could have been as short as a few months....

The flood would have had a dramatic effect on local ecosystems, and could even have affected the global climate. The model suggests that global sea level dropped 9.5 meters as a result of the flood.

Comments

[DaninVan]

Apparently Daniel Garcia-Castellanos of Spain's Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC) in Barcelona, uses the same New Math that the folks at East Anglia's CRU did/do...
"...water levels rose more than 10 meters ..."
and
"The model suggests that global sea level dropped 9.5 meters as a result of the flood."

All the World's oceans dropped 9.5 meters and the Med
filled by 10 meters.
Pull the other one, Daniel. As soon as I saw the word "model" my cynic sense kicked in.

[DaninVan]

All this nonsense started when scientists gave up slide rules in favour of computer programs.

[Mick H]

I'll admit that the figure of 9.5 metres surprised me for the overall drop in ocean levels, but that 10 metres for the Mediterranean, if you read it again, is 10 metres per day - or rather, more than 10 metres per day. Obviously the Med is much more than 10 metres deep - and it's a big area.

[rocco gennari]

Well, and what if the Med didn't evere dry out? Where did the water spilled into if there were no space?
Computer model needs physical constrain. We must first provide constrains and then try to run models.