Dating the Flood - History of Lake Van (Part 2)
Dating the Flood - History of Lake Van (Part 1)
Continuing my review of the journal article, “A Geological Study of Lake Van, Eastern Turkey” by Degens, et. al.
Lake Van is a lake with a volume of 607 km 3 and a maximum depth of 451 m in a tectonically
active zone in eastern Anatolia. (p. 1)Only about 500 years appear to be
necessary for the lake to acquire its current shape and level, almost an instantaneous
event in terms of geological time and certainly far too rapid for geological
processes like sedimentation or subsidence to play a significant role. (p.20)
Assuming Lake Van filled uniformly over a 500-year period, as suggested by this article’s model, it would fill at a volume of 1.2 km 3 of water per year. Over 40 days, this works out to be .132 km 3, or 132 m 3. Now, according to the article’s Table 1, the surface area of the lake is 3,574 m 2. Divide that, and you get an increase in depth of .0076 m, or .3 inches. This tells us normal activity is not responsible for the flood. So, what activity was going on around 2800 BC, that was not normal?
The lake level record for this period may be cross-correlated to solar activity
(Fig, 6). With a one-year delay the lake rises with increasing sunspot number,
suggesting that there may be a causal relationship between them. At times of high
solar activity, weather conditions tend to become more unstable with more rain,
less evaporation and higher humidity, factors that promote a lake level rise. (p.16)
In Part 1, we saw that just before the time of the flood, there was a sun spot number of 0, followed by sustained sunspot activity. This was accompanied by a rare global earth temperature of under 15 degrees C (around the sunspot of 0), followed by a sharp trend to a rare maximum temperature of nearly 16 degrees C (during the sustained sunspot activity). The article discussing the earth temperatures (http://members.shaw.ca/sch25/FOS/Climate_Change_Science.html) shows how Lake Isabella’s surface height corresponds to sun spot number, similar to Lake Van, suggesting the correlation we see between the two journal articles would appear valid. In fact, according to the second article…
High solar activity corresponds to low cosmic ray counts, reduced low cloud cover, and higher temperatures.
This suggests there was a marked increase in cloud cover (i.e., less absolute humidity, higher relative humidity, as it cannot rise over the mountains) over Lake Van at the time we see lower sunspot activity and lower temperatures, followed by a sharp decrease in cloud cover (as sunspot activity increased and temperatures quickly rose) around 2800 BC. As stated yesterday, this was unlikely to be the sole source of the flood, but it would appear to be a contributing factor, as any precipitation would have nowhere to go during this narrow time, but down. Given the extreme nature of these variations, going from a sunspot of zero, to a trend that results in the 2nd highest temperature in “modern” times, a period of rain over 40 days, resulting in more than the typical .3 inches of rainfall computed above, is predicted by the data. How much of an increase? I cannot say. At the very least, 40 days of rain and heavy cloud cover over Lake Van (obscuring Noah’s views of the sky and mountains) seems consistent with (if not predicted by) the secular scientific data for that time.