Lake Agassiz
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Lake Agassiz was a pre-historic freshwater lake located south of Hudson Bay in North America. The lake covered an area ranging from the region located about halfway between Lake Winnipeg and Reindeer Lake in present day Manitoba and Saskatchewan in the north, to the vicinity of Watertown, South Dakota in the south. It also had at least three large adjacent lakes, one of which extended as far south as present day Spirit Lake, Iowa. The surface area of Lake Agassiz is estimated to have been about double that of the combined surface area of all five Great Lakes (208,610 km²).
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[edit] Modern conceptualization
In 1823, American geologist William Keating postulated that such a massive lake might have existed in that area. In 1879, the lake was named for Louis Agassiz, the Swiss paleontologist and geologist who originated the theory of the ice age.[1]
[edit] Significance of the lake
[edit] Possible origin of the ice age
Louis Agassiz and other paleontologist believed that the lake was formed by the ice age. However, a more recent theory states that the sudden drainage of the lake -- when its northern boundary breached, draining the lake into Hudson Bay -- caused the ice age when the cold fresh water from the lake mixed with the warmer currents of the northwestern Atlantic Ocean. This sudden change of temperature would have temporarily, but significantly, paused the convection of air in the atmosphere.[2] As a result, the polar regions would have grown colder while the equatorial regions would have grown warmer.
[edit] Great flood
Louis Agassiz also theorized that the sudden influx of the lake's waters into the Atlantic Ocean might have raised sea level by about one meter. This would have suddenly and violently flooded most coastal areas. In turn, this would have led to the many great flood myths that originated in the more temperate regions of the world.
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ See the Wikipedia article on Lake Agassiz.
- ↑ Choi, Charles Q. "Big Freeze: Earth Could Plunge into Sudden Ice Age", LiveScience website, 2 December 2009, accessed 3 December 2009. (Alternate link at MSNBC.com)