Putting the Younger Dryas cold event into context
W. S. Broecker, G. H. Denton, R. L. Edwards, H. Cheng, R. B. Alley, and A. E. Putnam
Quaternary Science Reviews (2010)
DOI: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2010.02.019
The Younger Dryas event is by far the best studied of the millennial-scale cold snaps of glacial time. Yet its origin remains a subject of debate. The long-held scenario that the Younger Dryas was a one-time outlier triggered by a flood of water stored in proglacial Lake Agassiz has fallen from favor due to lack of a clear geomorphic signature at the correct time and place on the landscape. The recent suggestion that the Younger Dryas was triggered by the impact of a comet has not gained traction. Instead, evidence from Chinese stalagmites suggests that, rather than being a freak occurrence, the Younger Dryas is an integral part of the deglacial sequence of events that produced the last termination on a global scale.