The Younger Dryas Was Bookended by Two Catastrophes. The Second One May Have Been Solar

The Younger Dryas was not a single event. Randall Carlson argues it was bookended by two separate catastrophes - one at its onset approximately 12,800 years ago, where the proxy evidence for a cosmic impact is now substantial, and one at its termination approximately 11,700 years ago, where the picture is less clear.

For the end of the Younger Dryas, Randall finds Robert Schoch's solar event hypothesis genuinely compelling. The proxy evidence for a cosmic impact at the termination is not as strong as at the onset, which leaves room for a different mechanism. What has emerged from solar observing satellites deployed in recent decades is a more dynamic and variable sun than previously modelled - one capable of producing significant coronal mass ejections and solar storms. Critically, there appears to be a correlation between cometary material falling into the sun and reactive events in the chromosphere that translate into exactly those kinds of solar outbursts. If a fragmenting comet was responsible for the onset of the Younger Dryas, the debris trail it left behind may have continued interacting with the solar system - and potentially with the sun itself - in ways that contributed to the abrupt warming event that ended it.