Re: The Western Interior Seaway (and computers)

[don ohmes <d_ohmes@yahoo.com>]

An oversimplification, but--

It seems likely to me that the general flow of WIS was
strongly south to north circa 94 my BP. Sinking
surface HOH in the Artic would pull (very?) warm WIS
HOH into that basin. Cooled bottom HOH in the Arctic
Basin would then flow out of the deepest exit,
arguably the mouth of the N Atlantic trough, and
subsequently down to the Gulf of Mexico. HOH welling
up from the Atlantic would be pre-warmed in the Gulf
of Mexico and enter the WIS. In other words, the WIS
would form the top half of the "conveyor" and the N
Atlantic would form the bottom. Such a short loop
(sort of a Gulf Stream minus the HOH matrix) could
move lots of heat poleward.

Don 


--- Phil Bigelow <bigelowp@juno.com> wrote:

> 
> 
> On Tue, 28 Jun 2005 22:25:29 +0200 David Marjanovic
> <david.marjanovic@gmx.at> writes:
>  
> > I guess the temperature gradient could even have
> been inverse. 
> > Assuming the 
> > water was clean enough, the sun shone to the
> bottom of the WIS. 
> 
> 
> Considering the prodigious sediment influx that
> inundated certain spots
> in the Seaway, I would imagine that the surface
> seawater in those areas
> had the appearance more like a cafe' mocha.  Most of
> the Pierre
> Shale/Bear Paw Shale (the substrate of the WIS) is
> mudstone, not
> sandstone.
> 
> Patchy areas of suspended particulates could really
> complicate the
> thermodynamic regime in the WIS, particularly if
> there are clear water
> (cooler?) regions and murky water (warmer?) regions.
>  The interactions
> between these zones could have been very complex.
> 
> <pb>
> --
> 
> 
> 
>