Younger Dryas: Climate's Catastrophic Snap

He describes the Younger Dryas as the last gasp of the ice age, a period that defies simple explanations. After thousands of years of gradual warming, the planet plunged back into full glacial conditions in less than a year. That reversal lasted twelve to thirteen hundred years before the climate lurched out of it just as abruptly, if not faster. The speed and magnitude of these shifts challenge conventional thinking about how climate systems operate. He emphasizes that this wasn't a slow drift but a catastrophic snap, both entering and exiting the cold period. The evidence points to mechanisms far more dramatic than the gradual processes typically invoked in mainstream climate science.