Environmental perturbations caused by the impacts of asteroids and comets

Abstract

We review the major impact‐associated mechanisms proposed to cause extinctions at the Cretaceous‐Tertiary geological boundary. We then discuss how the proposed extinction mechanisms may relate to the environmental consequences of asteroid and comet impacts in general. Our chief goal is to provide relatively simple prescriptions for evaluating the importance of impacting objects over a range of energies and compositions, but we also stress that there are many uncertainties. We conclude that impacts with energies less than about 10 Mt are a negligible hazard. For impacts with energies above 10 Mt and below about 10 4 Mt (i.e., impact frequencies less than one in 6 × 10 4 years, corresponding to comets and asteroids with diameters smaller than about 400 m and 650 m, respectively), blast damage, earthquakes, and fires should be important on a scale of 10 4 or 10 5 km², which corresponds to the area damaged in many natural disasters of recent history. However, tsunami excited by marine impacts could be more damaging, flooding a kilometer of coastal plain over entire ocean basins. In the energy range of 10 4–10 5 Mt (intervals up to 3 × 10 5 years, corresponding to comets and asteroids with diameters up to 850 m and 1.4 km, respectively) water vapor injections and ozone loss become significant on the global scale. In our nominal model, such an impact does not inject enough submicrometer dust into the stratosphere to produce major adverse effects, but if a higher fraction of pulverized rock than we think likely reaches the stratosphere, stratospheric dust (causing global cooling) would also be important in this energy range. Thus 10 5 Mt is a lower limit where damage might occur beyond the experience of human history. The energy range from 10 5 to 10 6 Mt (intervals up to 2 × 10 6 years, corresponding to comets and asteroids up to 1.8 and 3 km diameter) is transitional between regional and global effects. Stratospheric dust, sulfates released from within impacting asteroids, and soot from extensive wild‐fires sparked by thermal radiation from the impact can produce climatologically significant global optical depths of the order of 10. Moreover, the ejecta plumes of these impacts may produce enough NO from shock‐heated air to destroy the ozone shield. Between 10 6 and 10 7 Mt (intervals up to 1.5 × 10 7 years, corresponding to comets and asteroids up to 4 and 6.5 km diameter), dust and sulfate levels would be high enough to reduce light levels below those necessary for photosynthesis. Ballistic ejecta reentering the atmosphere as shooting stars would set fires over regions exceeding 10 7 km², and the resulting smoke would reduce light levels even further. At energies above 10 7 Mt, blast and earthquake damage reach the regional scale (10 6 km²). Tsunami cresting to 100 m and flooding 20 km inland could sweep the coastal zones of one of the world's ocean basins. Fires would be set globally. Light levels may drop so low from the smoke, dust, and sulfate as to make vision impossible. At energies approaching 10 9 Mt (>10 8 years) the ocean surface waters may be acidified globally by sulfur from the interiors of comets and asteroids. The Cretaceous‐Tertiary impact in particular struck evaporate substrates that very likely generated a dense, widespread sulfate aerosol layer with consequent climatic effects. The combination of all of these physical effects would surely represent a devastating stress on the global biosphere.