The Western Interior Seaway (and computers)

[Phil Bigelow <bigelowp@juno.com>]

There is nothing presently in existence that is an analog to the WIS.

The Seaway was, at its maximum, a multi-thousand kilometer, N-S-trending,
pole-to-semitropical shallow waterway, bounded by two large landmasses
that supplied a prodigious amount of sediment into the WIS basin.

With such a long geographic temperature gradient, we really don't know
how the currents behaved on a macro-level, leave alone on a local level,
nor do we know how much they moderated the air temp in the polar regions.
That would be one of the reasons for doing the project in the first
place.  Water depth in the WIS (which was shallow) complicates our
understanding somewhat, because most of our existing models of
large-scale oceanic circulation assume deeper water in order to work
correctly.

If the WIS was ever computer modeled for a point in time (what a
nightmarish project that would be!), existing climate/ocean current
algorithms may not be optimum for the job and the software may need to be
patched or even rewritten from scratch.  And the dataset would have to
include the whole Earth, because when it comes to the
hydrosphere/atmosphere, the WIS system was connected to and dependant on
all other points on the Earth (flashback to Jeff Goldblum using the
"Butterfly Effect" as a pickup line in the movie JP).  The success of
such a project would hinge on obtaining reliable data.

It would go something like this (give or take): Choose a geologic time
(say 73 mya) and then obtain:

- Accurate chronological bracketing for each data point (a major project
in itself).

- Average air temps at various locations surrounding the seaway (inferred
from the flora).
 
- Benthic temps in the WIS at various locations. (inferred from oxygen
isotope and faunal data).

- Pelagic temps in the WIS at various locations. (inferred from oxygen
isotope and microfaunal data).

- Marine temperature data points for other places on the Earth at that
time (including a few bathyal/abyssal temp. data points, if possible).

- Average air temperature data points for other land masses on the Earth
(inferred from their flora).

- Having a good understanding of the paleogeography of the WIS and the
rest of the Earth's land masses. (We are good to go on this).

- Having a good understanding of the locations and elevations of the
major mountain ranges and high plateaus on Earth at the time. (High
elevation land masses REALLY screw up the Earth's surface air temps and
air currents, and if you don't know where these high points were at 73
mya, then your air circulation model, and indirectly, the hydrospheric
model, becomes junk).

Some of the data is already present in the paleo literature, going back
70 years or more.  But it would be a major headache to extract it,
interpret it, and then make it machine readable.

Nonetheless, if the project was ever attempted, I like your idea of
making it into a SETI@home style distributed computing project!  In fact,
short of obtaining access to a Cray, distributed computing may be the
only option available!

<pb>
--


On Tue, 28 Jun 2005 09:45:09 +0100 Aidan Karley
<aidan_karley@yahoo.co.uk> writes:
> In article 
> <20050627212256.GMIY11226.aamta11-winn.ispmail.ntl.com@newlaptop>, 
> John Hunt wrote:
> > However, lets call it the EIS (European Interior Sea), also 
> consists of the
> > English channel and the Baltic, making it much more complex.
> >
>        Le Manche (a.k.a. the English Channel, from the southern 
> border) will, 
> I am sure, make an appreciable difference. But the Baltic is a dead 
> end by a 
> considerable margin. Appreciable parts of the Baltic ice over in an 
> average 
> winter, but even in pretty extreme winters the North Sea doesn't 
> even acquire 
> a rim of ice on the beaches. 
> 
> 
> > The British Isles are likely to be much smaller than the parts of
> > continental North America divided by the WIS.
> >
>        Agreed. The climatic differences between the West and East 
> sides of 
> Britain are at least as substantial as those between the West side 
> of Europe 
> (well, following my travels, the Netherlands) and Central Europe or 
> even the 
> Urals/ West Siberia. That's why I don't particularly like the North 
> Sea as a 
> parallel to the WIS. But what else is available? The Persian Gulf?
>        
> > To: aidan@karley.org, dinosaur@usc.edu
> >
>        Hmmm Where did that (implicit) "Reply-To:" come from? Excuse 
> me, I 
> have a large spanner and a computer that should be trembling in it's 
> logic 
> gates ...
>        
> -- 
>  Aidan Karley,
>  Aberdeen, Scotland,
>  Location: 57°10' N,  02°09'  W (sub-tropical Aberdeen), 0.021233
>  Written at Tue, 28 Jun 2005 09:16 +0100
> 
> 
> 
>               
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