“Cataclysmic” flood in Mediterranean Sea

Courtesy of T Abele:

I recently read an article from science news that had to do with a water channel. This article was called “The Big Spill: Flood Could Have Filled Mediterranean In Less Than Two Years.” This article was published on December 9,2009. Lisa Grossman wrote the article.

This article talks about a “cataclysmic” flood that affected the Mediterranean Sea. This occurred several millions of years ago. The main point of this article is how the Mediterranean Sea was not always a sea. In fact for a long time it was a big empty basin. Scientists are saying a large flood from the Atlantic Ocean was so powerful that it filled this basin and shaped the form of what is now called the Mediterranean Sea. The flood was very powerful and shaped the rocks and soil on the edges of the sea.

The calculations of this flood are intense. The height of water was more than ten meters high. An interesting statistic from Daniel Garcia-Castellanos is “The model shows one hundred million cubic centimeters of water flow through the channel per second, with water gushing at speeds of 100 kilometers an hour.”

The article also talks about how early models showed this data put not on a time line. Scientists can now get a more accurate measure of how many years ago this basin was filled and transformed into the Mediterranean Sea.
This flood is debated to have taken anywhere from four months to two years to fill the entire Mediterranean Sea. Also this flood is said to have a large impact on the ecosystem and could have ties to affecting previous global climate. The article says sea levels dropped 9.5 meters due to this gigantic flood.

Scientists have also discovered a smaller flood that took place in North America in a more recent timeline. This flood occurred 12,000 years ago. This flood is linked to other different climate conditions. It was linked to a “cold snap.” Scientists are now researching whether the flood at the Mediterranean could of have had similar effects.