Christian RyanIf you live in the northern hemisphere, it is my prayer that you are blessed with a white Christmas. The snow cover adds to the festivity of the surroundings and fills some of us with cheer. Others of us wish that we did not have to shovel our driveways and sidewalks. The snow will not last forever; it will soon melt as temperature rises and spring returns. But there once was a time when the snow and ice did not melt across much of the northern hemisphere. Not only did it never melt, it accumulated winter after winter to become huge mountains of ice. This was the Ice Age.
The following article is a summary of “A Rapid Ice Age and Transition to Ice Sheet Growth,” by Steve Gollmer, and of the surrounding discussion and research pertaining to it. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of New Creation.
Both old-earth and young-earth scientists accept that there was at least one time in history when one-third of the planet’s land surface was covered in huge glaciers called ice sheets. But old-earth scientists believe there have been several ice ages over a multi billion-year history, and multiple glacial cycles during each one. Meanwhile, young-earth scientists think there was only one Ice Age and that it began sometime between the end of Noah’s Flood and the time of Abraham, a timespan of only thousands of years at most. How can we account for an ice age within this comparatively brief period of time?
In a recent publication in the 2023 Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism, atmospheric scientist Dr. Steve Gollmer utilized a computer model to recreate what mechanisms may have been at work to result in a rapid build up of ice sheets in just a few centuries.
How Do Young-Earth Creationists Explain the Ice Age?
Talk of the Ice Age on a young-earth timescale is not new. Meteorologist Dr. Michael Oard was arguably the first to develop a comprehensive model of this phenomenon.
In 1990, he proposed that heat generated from volcanic activity and the movement of continents during the Flood left the oceans at around 86°F (30 °C), far warmer than they are today. Volcanic activity during and after the Flood spewed so many aerosols and other debris into the atmosphere that much of the Sun’s heat and light were unable to enter the earth’s atmosphere. This caused unique conditions of cool continents and warm oceans.
Evaporation of water from the ocean increased, leading to increased precipitation on the land. In the high latitudes and mountain regions, precipitation fell as snow and turned to ice as it built up. With so much volcanic debris in the atmosphere, the snow and ice did not melt every year. Instead, it continued to accumulate before surging outward and resulting in the Ice Age. Once the ocean cooled sufficiently to decrease evaporation and precipitation rates, and once volcanic debris in the atmosphere cleared, the snow and ice began to melt and the Ice Age was over.
Based on Oard’s modeling, it would have taken between 200 and 1,700 years (with 500 years considered most likely) to reach glacial maximum, with ice sheets measuring hundreds of feet in thickness. It would have taken another 200 years for the ice sheets to melt back.1,2
Following in Oard’s Footsteps
Atmospheric scientists, including Karen Spelman, Dr. Larry Vardiman, and even Gollmer himself picked up Oard’s research and reached similar conclusions.3,4,5 They all used sophisticated climate modeling computer programs to independently and successfully demonstrate that increased rates of precipitation occur at higher latitudes when the Arctic Ocean temperatures increased. They also successfully demonstrated that the build-up of thick ice sheets on the continents was possible in the timeframe documented in Scripture. But Gollmer notes this research has unresolved problems.
- The climate models used by Spelman and Vardiman assume rapid cooling of the ocean over time, but did not account for heat retained by deep oceans or the impact that ocean surface circulation has on cooling rates.
- Early post-Flood ocean temperatures of 86°F made Equatorial regions much too warm, even with volcanic debris blocking out additional heat from the sun. This caused precipitation to fall in the form of rain instead of snow.
- Precipitation was happening in the wrong places. To generate an ice age, precipitation would need to happen on land so ice sheets could form. But in previous simulations, most of the precipitation happened over the ocean.
Climate Model Setup and Simulation
Dr. Gollmer used a new computer model called GISS Model E2.1.2 to simulate cooling of the ocean. It starts uniformly at 75.2°F, over a 400 year timeframe. He set the atmospheric debris at a thickness of 2.0 and uniform from the North Pole to the South Pole. It also removed ice sheets from Antarctica and Greenland, along with polar sea ice. The program interpreted any exposed land area as bare ground void of vegetation in order to calculate how well it reflected sunlight back into space and retained moisture. With these parameters in place, Dr. Gollmer set GISS Model E2.1.2 to run the simulation.
Upcoming Ice Age Climate Forecast
Dr. Gollmer’s simulation showed that, over the course of almost 400 years, the climate steadily transitioned from warm, wet Arctic conditions to an age of ice and snow. It would be interesting to imagine what a weather forecast for the early post-Flood world would have been like! We will now turn to Frostina Winterfield for an ice age climate forecast, reimagined as a weather report. Take it away, Frostina!
Year 1
In the first year, we can expect a wet spring and fall with heavy rainfall over the Arctic regions. This is fueled by an Arctic Ocean still swirling with warm waters left over from the worldwide Flood of Noah’s day. Rainfall will primarily concentrate over open waters, leaving land regions largely unaffected.
Year 10
Temperatures are finally dropping! Winter snowfalls are expected to blanket Canada, Scandinavia, Asia, and Antarctica, with light flurries of up to 2 mm/day. Snow accumulation should reach 20 cm per season, but it will melt away by summer, so no long-term snow build up just yet.
Year 20
Major snow alert for Greenland! Its inland regions will experience several meters of snow accumulation as winters grow harsher. Snowfall in other regions will remain seasonal and moderate.
Year 40
Prepare for a snowy year-round climate in the Arctic and Antarctica! Persistent sea ice formation and subzero air temperatures will bring steady snowfalls maxing at 3 mm/day. Greenland is expected to be buried under up to 4 meters of snow, and Antarctic snow levels will be catching up fast.
Year 160
Ice sheets are expected to migrate southward! In Canada and Northern Europe, we will see heavy snowfalls and permanent ice cover dominate the landscape. Meanwhile, in Greenland and Antarctica, we will see snow depth stabilize, maintaining substantial layers. In the lower latitudes, expect occasional icy conditions to begin creeping in.
Year 390
The high latitudes are in the middle of a snow blitz! Year-round snowfall now blankets regions as far south as the Mediterranean and the southernmost tips of South America and Africa. While snow depth has not changed much in the subsequent 230 years, the Great Lakes are expected to receive one meter of solid ice cover. The world has successfully entered the initial stages of an ice age. Be sure to pack your snow gear—and don’t forget the ice scraper!
Research Into the Future
Dr. Gollmer’s research is off to a good start, successfully showcasing the start of an ice age on the continents in just a few hundred years. However, much more work is needed to fully thaw out a proper Ice Age model from a young-earth perspective. Dr. Gollmer highlights several areas that need more work.
Ocean & Continent Configuration
The ice age scenario Dr. Gollmer ran essentially used a modern world map, with continents and oceans in the same configuration as they are today. However, we know that the immediate post-Flood world would not have looked exactly as our earth’s surface does now. Large expanses of continental shelves were exposed due to a lowering of the sea level. Mountain building continued to reshape the continents. Dr. Gollmer says that a future model should accommodate these factors.
Missing Ice in Greenland & Antarctica
Dr. Gollmer’s computer-run scenario did not record any ice cover for Greenland and Antarctica, only snow accumulation. This is because the simulation automatically removed ice sheets over these regions without changing the ground type. As a result, the model ignored ice accumulations in Greenland and Antarctica. This might also explain why snow thickness did not increase, because that snow turned to ice. Given that Greenland and Antarctica have the largest ice sheets in the modern world, understanding how they glaciated will be important.
Realistic Stratospheric Circulation
While the problems described above are important, perhaps the underlying issue has to do with the GISS-E2.1 model itself. Even though the model is widely used by scientists attempting to reconstruct ancient climates, there is always room for improvement. Even mainstream, old-earth scientists acknowledge this. In its current form, GISS-E2.1 is unable to provide realistic stratospheric circulation. This is not problematic for reconstructing the climate from recent history, but it does create much difficulty when we try to figure out what the climate was like in the ancient past. Dr. Gollmer says that more research is needed to identify specific ocean and surface conditions associated with enhanced snowfall brought on by warm oceans and atmospheric volcanic debris in the years following the Flood.
Conclusion
Despite the limitations of this research, the model is still a very helpful tool for studying a rapid ice age scenario. Dr. Gollmer’s simulations have shown how the post-Flood world could transition from a warm ocean world into one dominated by glaciers of pre-Ice Age conditions. He also demonstrated how these conditions could be brought on thanks to thick layers of volcanic debris in the atmosphere. While the precipitation and snowfall rates are not at a level required by the current young-earth Ice Age model yet, ice-covered continents begin to take shape by the end of the simulation.
So the next time you’re singing “Let it Snow” or “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas,” you can remember there once was a time when over a third of the earth’s land surface really did get a white Christmas. Except, this white Christmas wasn’t just around for the holidays. It stuck around, forming mountains of ice that surged across the land and lasted for centuries. A time when earth was held in the frozen grip of ice.
Learn More About the Ice Age
Footnotes
- Oard, Michael J. (1986) “An Ice Age Within the Biblical Time Frame,” Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism: Vol. 1, Article 48. ↩︎
- Oard, M.J. “A post-flood ice-age model can account for Quaternary features. Origins 17(1990):8-26; Oard MJ. 1 An Ice-Age Caused by the Genesis Flood. ICR Technical Monograph. (El Cajon, CA: Institute for Creation Research, 1990). ↩︎
- Spelman, K.E. (1996). “A Sensitivity study of the post-flood climate using the NCAR CCM1 model with a warm sea-surface temperature,” ICR Thesis, ICR Graduate School, El Cajon, CA. ↩︎
- Vardiman, L. , & Brewer, W. (2012). “Numerical Simulations of Three Nor’easters with a Warm Atlantic Ocean.” Answers Research Journal, 5, 39–58. ↩︎
- Gollmer, S.M. (2018). “Effect of aerosol distributions on precipitation patterns need for a rapid ice age.” In Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism, ed. J.H. Whitmore. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Creation Science Fellowship. ↩︎
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