Were rapid sea-level rise, melting glaciers and coastal inundation accelerated by a release of sequestered methane sometime between 8300 and 7800 years BP along the Norwegian coastline?   What can we learn about the events preceding Storegga?  

Was this succinct but dramatic event a precursor of near-future possibilities... so that modeling it will give insights about possible global effects of tundra permafrost melting and methane releases in Siberia, and northern Russia, Canada and Alaska?

http://www.ipernity.com/doc/jjfanagh/6079233/sizes/560

The 8200 Year Cooling Event triggered by the Lake Agassiz jönkuhlhaup and its subsequent multi-year rapid draining eastward lasted approximately 65-80 years and then slowed, and in a slightly deeper ocean the Gulf Stream and ENAW were re-invigourated.  Further staged releases of melt-water from the Laurentide ice sheet brought measurable change to sea level and to ocean current behaviour.

How long did it take for these warmer, deepening waters to over-top the Faroe-Iceland Rise and the Wyville-Thomson Ridge? How soon after that availability of considerably warmer water into the Norwegian Sea did rising ocean levels inundate the moraine-laden (and frozen?) Norwegian coastal plain and its permafrost tundra, and the more northerly Barents plain?  When the tundra melted rapidly under rising and then warmer water, did the known rapidly-released sequestered methane boil out at such a fast rate that the methane spike triggered the accompanying climate temperature spike? 

The cause of the c. 8100-7800 years BP Storegga slide itself is not clearly understood (to be resolved elsewhere): did a single explosive expansion/release of sequestered methane in the southern coastal-plains tundra break loose the Storegga Slide or was it triggered (after the permafrost had softened) by a combination of structural slope failure and perhaps a local earthquake from one of the adjoining faults... or all of the above?  http://www.ngi.no/en/Contentboxes-and-structures/Reference-Projects/Reference-projects/Ormen-Lange-and-Storegga/

Had the methane supply in the narrow strip of Norwegian coastline and north in the Barents not been used up when it was (rapidly), the methane would have wrecked havoc still further... as part of the known kind of closed feedback loop between methane clathrate thawing and atmospheric warming.  The loop stopped, I believe, because the coastline tundra and Barents tundra were limited in their supply of sequestered methane.

Human coastal culture was compromised immediately by a significant tsunami when part of the Norwegian glacial moraine coastline collapsed and broke apart... causing a massive undersea landslide, the largest known.  The Faroe, Shetlands, east Scotland and Doggerland cultures were all negatively impacted. If there were Norwegian coastal villages, they were apparently erased.  Climate effects upon early human culture cannot be underestimated. Some subsequent intermediate cultures (ie. Early Bronze Age Red Paint People, Middle Bronze Age Irish, Middle Ages Pueblo) apparently disappeared under the effects of hemispheric or regional climate disasters. 

I am reminded that the public does not take seriously the short time in which effects can unwind. The Storegga event in particular may demonstrate vividly the methane clathrate feedback loop - which if duplicated in the present day could accelerate virtually unchecked because the sequestered reserves in permafrost are almost limitless.   

I'd like to hear from researchers interested either in this time period or in modeling the collected data from the approximately 350-year period from the onset of the 8200-Year Cooling Event (ice core, ocean sediment) to determine if the Storegga Event can act as a convincing template for events now potentially poised to unwind.  

Storegga's concise boundaries and limited range of effects (vast and global as they were) may be a useful "test case" by which to demonstrate the future we do not wish to repeat.

Michael Cerulli Billingsley, Research Consultant

PYRN and Irish Spiritual Heritage Association

contact - michael@irishspiritualheritage.org