How reliable is this theory which directly contradicts previous studies of global freezing following the Chicxulub impact? I look forward to your feedback.
Dino-Killing Asteroid Impact Warmed Earth’s Climate for 100,000 Years
Carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere after the impact of the Chicxulub asteroid, which ended the era of dinosaurs some 65 million years ago, warmed the Earth’s climate for 100,000 years, a new study has revealed.
The Dino-Killing Asteroid Blotted Out the Sun for Two Years
On Monday the moon passed directly between the sun and the Earth, sending towns in the path of totality into darkness for a maximum of two minutes. But 66 million years ago, after a great asteroid struck the world of the dinosaurs, the sun’s light was blotted out around the planet for an unbelievable two years.
There was a period of significantly less direct sunshine on earth (up to a few decades possibly) where temperatures plunged.
Over the following 100,000 years (noting that 100,000 years is much, much longer than even a century), the average global temperature was apparently higher than before the impact presumably due to some kind of greenhouse effect.
I think I’m missing something here because I’m not seeing the contradiction between these two ideas.
Note also that according to most thinking I’ve read on this subject, the “impact winter,” no matter how long it lasted or how severe it was, was irrelevant to the extinction of nonavian dinosaurs and other large land animals.
I frequently see conversations online in which someone suggests that the long sunless plant-killing cold would have starved the dinosaurs. Although there were nonavian dinosaurs living in the then-polar regions, acclimatized to the cooler weather there (it was not as cold as today) and used to long periods of darkness in winter, even they would not have survived a severe impact winter. But that’s irrelevant in this case, because the Chicxulub impactor probably killed every animal on the surface of the earth with shock and fire. The debris re-entering the atmosphere around the world is believed to have set the earth’s atmosphere on fire; surface temperatures are estimated to have been 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit. No animal, Jeff Goldblum included, could have found a way to survive that.
The surviving animals were either under water or underground (in a test, temperatures were tolerable in tunnels 8 inches below a forest floor that was being incinerated at 1,500 degrees).
The extinction affected more than the nonavian dinosaurs – a lot of sea life was lost – and those animals probably were affected by the impact winter (and, according to this study, the following warming). But the dinosaurs we loved as children were gone by then.
You might also survive if you happened to be on or above the water, sufficiently far from the flammable stuff on the shores. Which is a big advantage to flying creatures, which is probably why all of the dinosaurs that survived were fliers.