The earth is a beautiful ecological galaxy. It is precisely with a beautiful and suitable ecosystem that early life on the earth can be born, and life will continue to evolve and evolve, and finally, intelligent life human beings will be born. Although the survival and continuation of life on the earth cannot be separated from a beautiful ecosystem, the earth’s ecosystem has not remained unchanged for billions of years, but has often undergone some drastic changes.
Every huge change in the earth’s ecology will bring huge disasters to the earth’s organisms. After the disaster, new species will appear and enrich the earth’s biological world. And every huge change in the earth’s ecology will basically have a big change in the earth’s temperature. The earth once experienced an extremely cold era, which is the Great Ice Age.
The earth has also experienced several high-temperature epochs, such as the Cambrian Big Bang era of life 500 million years ago. The average temperature of the earth at that time was 7 degrees Celsius higher than it is now. At that time, the earth was an era of tropical rain forests with a large number of animals. It keeps appearing and ushered in a biological explosion.
After the Cambrian life explosion, the earth has ushered in five mass extinction events, and the third mass extinction is the most serious of the five mass extinctions. The mass extinction caused the extinction of 96% of the creatures on the earth, almost Let the earth’s creatures come to an end. Even with such a serious biological extinction event, the earth’s ecology has not completely collapsed. After millions of years of restoration, the earth’s ecology has recovered again, and new species have begun to appear in large numbers.
However, shortly after the third mass extinction, the earth once again ushered in a huge ecological change, and this time the ecological change was caused by a heavy rain. I believe that many friends are no strangers to heavy rains. Since July, hot weather has continued to appear, and we have also ushered in the rainy season.
I believe that my friends living in the south have been unhappy for the past month. The reason is that the continuous rainfall has brought severe floods. Heavy rains will bring us some serious floods, endangering our lives and property. In the eyes of many people, if the torrential rain continues for the next month, it is estimated that it will be a huge disaster that will test mankind.
It can be seen that the continuous heavy rains have severely damaged the ecology of the earth, and we cannot tolerate heavy rains that last for up to a month. But 230 million years ago, a terrible Carnian flood occurred. The so-called Carnian flood event refers to a torrential rain that lasted for 2 million years.
You can believe it, what is the scene of a two million-year torrential rain? Such a disaster will definitely bring huge damage to the earth’s ecology. In fact, it is true. This long rainstorm brought about the fourth mass extinction. The ecology of the earth has also been completely changed because of this heavy rain. So how did this heavy rain that lasted for 2 million years happened?
We must know that in our cognition, a heavy rain is when the clouds gather a large amount of moisture, and the air cools down to the ground. Generally speaking, the amount of water accumulated by the clouds in the atmosphere will not be too much, even in the southern and coastal areas where there is a lot of moisture, it will not rain continuously. This long rainstorm 230 million years ago can last for 2 million years, indicating that the amount of water in the atmosphere at that time accumulated to a point that we could not imagine. How did that amount of atmospheric water come from?
In fact, the root of all this has a lot to do with the geological structure of the earth at that time. I believe that friends who have a certain understanding of the history of the earth should know that in the Triassic period 250 million years ago, the earth did not have six major plates at that time. It is a whole Pangu continent. In other words, the earth at that time had only one continental land, and it had not been split into seven major plates.
On the periphery of this supercontinent is a vast ocean area. An undivided Pangea continent was not particularly good news for the earth’s ecology at that time. Because the land is all together, the water vapor in the ocean can basically only spread to the coastal land, and the depth of the land cannot get a lot of water vapor.
You must know that even on the current seven major plates of land, places far away from the ocean are still drier and less rain, not to mention a whole Pangea continent. Therefore, Pangea at that time was basically in an environment of high temperature and drought. Many places have become deserts. Scientists have proved this well through the red sandstone left by the Sansang Period.
In the hot and arid Pangea continent, there are no abundant plants. In order to adapt to the arid and hot environment, the creatures on the Pangea continent evolved the ability to adapt to the arid environment. If so, shouldn’t there be continuous heavy rains at the time? Perhaps in the eyes of many people, a hot environment will not bring heavy rainfall, but will only bring drought.
But in fact, when the temperature rises to a certain level, drought will no longer exist, and the earth will become a rainstorm world at that time. Why is this? Let’s do some simple analysis on this. 230 million years ago, in addition to the long-term drought and heat of Pangu continent because there was no rain, a major disaster event with far-reaching impact occurred at that time.
This kind of catastrophe happens now and then from time to time, and that is volcanic eruption. I believe my friends are no strangers to volcanic eruption. In recent years, there have been several small volcanic eruptions on the earth, and the impact of volcanic eruptions on the earth’s ecology is quite severe. 230 million years ago, Pangu continent erupted with a volcanic eruption that lasted for 5 million years.
If the time of volcanic eruption is not too long, the ecology of the earth will not have a particularly obvious impact. But if the duration is particularly long, then the ecology of the earth will suffer. A volcanic eruption that lasts for up to 5 million years will cause the outflow of lava up to 6 kilometers thick. More importantly, volcanic eruptions release greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide.
Carbon dioxide is a serious greenhouse gas. When its content in the atmosphere continues to rise, the temperature of the earth will also continue to rise. The greatly increased temperature will cause the ocean to evaporate continuously, and a large amount of water vapor will enter the atmosphere. After a long time of accumulation, after enough water vapor accumulated in the atmosphere, a large area of rain finally occurred.
As the eruption of the volcano continued, the occurrence of heavy rainfall did not change the continuous rise of the earth’s temperature at that time, so the ocean and the atmosphere formed a continuous exchange of water vapor, and a torrential rain that lasted for 2 million years also occurred.
The continuous rain made the land wet and completely changed the ecosystem. After 2 million years of baptism, the animals and plants that were originally drought-tolerant have become extinct. Tall plants grew on the earth, and then large herbivores appeared. With abundant food sources, this also makes carnivorous animals bigger.
Although this long rainstorm has wiped out a large number of creatures, one kind of creature has risen in this rainstorm. I believe many friends have already thought of what this creature is? Yes, they are the dinosaurs that later dominated the earth for 160 million years.
Why is it said that such a long rainstorm might reappear in the future? Through the previous introduction, I believe that many of my friends know that the reason for the torrential rain lasting for up to 2 million years is actually the very serious greenhouse effect at that time, but the greenhouse effect was caused by the volcanic eruption at that time. Therefore, as long as the greenhouse effect continues to intensify, when the temperature rises to a certain level, the ecology of the earth will collapse. At that time, a large amount of seawater will also continue to evaporate into the atmosphere.
Now, with the rapid development of human industry, the content of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is constantly reaching new highs, and the greenhouse effect is also intensifying. Moreover, it is difficult to change this situation at present. If this trend continues, it may happen again in the near future, the Carnian flood event that occurred 230 million years ago.