Under the auspices of the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP), during April and May 2016 a large team of scientists and engineers sank a 1.3 km deep drill hole into the offshore, central part of the Chicxulub impact crater, which coincided with the K-Pg mass extinction event. Over the last year work has been underway to analyse the core samples aimed at investigating every aspect of the impact and its effects. Most of the data is yet to emerge, but the team has published the results of advanced modelling of the amount of climate-affecting gases and dusts that may have been ejected (Artemieva, N. et al. 2017. Quantifying the release of climate-active gases by large meteorite imp-acts with a case study of Chicxulub. Geophysical Research Letters, v. 44; DOI: 10.1002/2017GL074879). . From petroleum exploration in the Gulf of Mexico the impact site is known to have been underlain by about 2.5 to 3.5 km of Mesozoic sediments that include substantial amounts of limestones and evaporitic anhydrite (CaSO4) – thicknesses of each are of the order of a kilometre. The impact would inevitably have yielded huge volumes of carbon- and sulfur dioxide gases, as well as water vapour plus solid and molten ejecta. The first, of course, is a critical greenhouse gas, whereas SO2 would form sulfuric acid aerosols if it entered the stratosphere. They are known to block incoming solar radiation. So both warming and cooling influences would have been initiated by the impact. Dust-sized ejecta that lingered in the atmosphere would also have had climatic cooling effects. The questions that the study aimed to answer concerns the relative masses of each gas that would have reached more than 25 km above the Earth to have long-term, global climatic effects and whether the dominant effect on climate was warming or cooling. Both gases would have added the environmental effects of making seawater more acid.
Such estimates depend on a large number of factors beyond the potential mass of carbonate and sulfate source rocks. For instance: how big the asteroid was; how fast it was travelling and the angle at which it struck the Earth’s surface determine the kinetic energy involved and the impact mechanism. How that energy was distributed between atmosphere, seawater and the sedimentary sequence, together with the pressure-temperature conditions for the dissociation of calcite and anhydrite all need to be accounted for by modelling. Moreover, the computation itself becomes extremely long beyond estimates for the first second or so of the impact. Earlier estimates had been limited by computer speeds to only the first few seconds of the impact and could not allow for other than vertical impacts. The new study, by supercomputers and improved algorithms, used a likely 60° angle of impact, new data on mineral decomposition and simulated the first 15 to 30 seconds. The results suggested that 325 ± 130 Gt of sulfur and 425 ± 160 Gt CO2 were ejected, compared with earlier estimates of 40-560 Gt of sulfur and 350-3,500 Gt of CO2. The greater proportion of sulfur release to the stratosphere pushes the model decisively towards global cooling, probably over a lengthy period – perhaps centuries. Taking dusts into account implies that visible sunlight would also have been blocked, devastating the photosynthetic base of the global food chain, in the sunlit parts of oceans as well as on land.
But we have to remember that these are the results of a theoretical model. In the same manner as this study has thrown earlier modeling into doubt, more data – and there will be a great many from the Chicxulub drill core itself – and more sophisticated computations may change the story significantly. Also, the other candidate for the mass extinction event, the flood basalt volcanism of the Deccan Traps, and its geochemical effects on the climate have yet to be factored in. The next few lines of Shakespeare’s soliloquy for Richard III may well emerge from future work
… Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried …
See also: BBC News comment on 31 October 201
Earth-logs 
Hello Steve
Two of us showed in a paper in 1989 that those corals that we infer to have been photosymbiotic, and therefore in effect photosynthetic, were significantly more susceptible to extinction during this particular mass extinction than non-symbiotic corals. Other authors have confirmed this in their own coral research.
In our own paper we argued that the widely suggested high atmospheric dust levels at this time would have reduced illumination levels (received solar radiation) on a large regional to global scale and this would have had an adverse effect on photosynthetic corals. So the coral pattern of extinctions is compatible with some kind of ‘dust model’.
At the time of writing we went along with the volcanicity version of the ‘dust model’. because volcanicity at the end of the Cretaceous was so globally widespread (e.g. Deccan Traps, mid-Pacific, western Cordilleras of the US etc). Whereas generation of high global levels of dust from an impact event in just one region seemed less likely. But as your article here says, there is now good evidence for a global ‘dust event’ from an impact. I admit though, that the coral extinction pattern clearly cannot on its own distinguish the effects of impact dust from volcanic dust. Incidentally, since lower radiation levels would lead to global cooling too, this would also have an adverse effect on photosymbiotic corals since they are confined today to tropical and semi-tropical waters.
best wishes
Brian
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Thanks for the comment Brian.
As this and my “Shock and Er …(https://earth-pages.co.uk/2017/10/06/shock-and-er-wait-a-minute/)” piece show, I become increasingly skeptical about ‘modelling’ – as they used to say about algorithms of all kinds, “Garbage in, garbage out (GIGO)”. Despite the hype at the time the Chicxulub coring was spudded, not a great deal has come out so far from a huge investment – but give the vast number of participants time. The odd thing is that the clever but outrageous Verneshot Hypothesis by Jason and Phipps Morgan and others (https://earth-pages.co.uk/2004/05/01/mass-extinctions-and-internal-catastrophes/ and https://earth-pages.co.uk/2015/01/15/verneshots-huge-volcanic-gas-blasts-ten-years-on/) remains unmentioned by most workers on the K-T/Pg and other mass extinction events although they have quite a few citations. I don’t think it is incompatible with the current weight of evidence, although I have my suspicions that it was deliberately provocative – according to the PDF of the original 2004 paper it was submitted in April 2003 … It encompasses both large-igneous-province processes and those of impacts, both of which are beyond human ken.
Best wishes
Steve
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