I’ve commented on this before. They are called “temperature inversions” of the severest kind. They occur when very cold upper air drops due to condensed moisture at near freezing temperatures.
When it lands on earth, because of its massive size, it kills by a literal flash freezing, all life. It freezes the lungs of living creatures which explains why the mammoths still had buttercups and other freshly eaten plants in their stomachs (not digested).
While my description might be somewhat general, I believe that it is close to what a massive temperature inversion can do.
Some holes in massive cloud formations are attributed to temperature inversions. I don’t have any more information on this except that photos of such holes show a nearly uniform circular pattern, like a donut hole does.
I would appreciate any additional information as it has been decades since I last read up on this subject.
Interesting. I just read a bit about it, and it can happen when a less dense warm air mass passes above a more dense cold air mass. The normal circumstances wouldn’t seem to produce something of the magnitude you are talking about though. Then I read these sentences:
“An inversion is also produced whenever radiation from the surface of the earth exceeds the amount of radiation received from the sun, which commonly occurs at night, or during the winter when the angle of the sun is very low in the sky. This effect is virtually confined to land regions as the ocean retains heat far longer. In the polar regions during winter, inversions are nearly always present over land.”
Ok, so what if an event causes an unheard of drop in the amount of solar radiation received from the sun? For example, if the upper atmosphere was suddenly choked with light colored particles creating a more reflective albedo effect? I’m thinking supermassive volcanic eruption or something of that nature. Air circulation patterns mean that the poles would be the last place for the dust to disperse to. If the dust from the larger volume of air near the middle of the planet concentrated in the smaller volume at the poles, packing the dust in tighter, combined with already lower temps at the poles, you could see a significantly colder inversion than in other regions.
Dr. Walt Brown PhD Mech. Eng. M.I.T.has an online book describing the hydroplate theory and also detailing the latest science on the wooly mammoth. It explains much more of the confounding natural features found on Earth and in our Solar System than any other theory I’ve encountered.
Center for Scientific Creation - In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood
http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/IntheBeginningTOC.html
Excerpt on wooly mammoth theories...
“Theories Attempting to Explain Frozen Mammoths
Ten theories have been proposed to explain the frozen mammoth puzzle. Each will be described below as an advocate would.
Fruitful theories answer not only the obvious, initial questions but also solve perplexing and seemingly unrelated problems. As we unravel the mystery of the frozen mammoths, we may answer broader questions and even uncover a sequence of dramatic, global events.
Robust theories also provide details that result in surprising and testable predictions. Keep this in mind as we examine all ten explanations. With each, ask yourself, “What predictions can this theory make?” If few predictions are forthcoming, the theory is probably weak.118 If theories could not be published unless they included many details and specific predictions, we would be mercifully spared many distractions and false ideas.
Hydroplate Theory. [For a more complete description of the hydroplate theory, read pages 110–144.] On that terrible day, the rupture of the earth’s crust passed between what is now Siberia and Alaska in minutes. Jetting water from the fountains of the great deep first fell as rain. During the next few hours, some of the accelerating and expanding subterranean water that went above the atmosphere (where the effective temperature is several hundred degrees below zero Fahrenheit) froze and fell as hail.120 Some animals were suddenly buried, suffocated, frozen, and compressed by tons of cold, muddy ice crystals from the gigantic “hail storm.” Dirt in this ice prevented it from floating as the flood waters submerged these regions after days and weeks. Blankets of this muddy ice, hundreds of feet thick, insulated and preserved many animals during the flood phase. As the topmost layers of ice melted, the dirt in that ice remained and settled—blanketing and further insulating the deeper ice and buried animals.
Months later, after mountains were suddenly pushed up, the earth’s balance shifted, the earth slowly “rolled” 35°–45°, so Siberia and Alaska moved from temperate latitudes (similar to south-central Canada and central United States today) to their present positions. [For details, see Endnote 66 on page 141.] As the flood waters drained off the continents, the icy graves in warmer climates melted, and buried animals decayed. However, many animals, buried in what are now permafrost regions, were preserved.
These conclusions can be reached quite simply. The evidence showing compression and suffocation of the frozen mammoths implies rapid burial. Rapid burial and sudden freezing suggest a supercold “ice dump.”
compression + suffocation = rapid burial
rapid burial + sudden freezing = an “ice dump”
[ Removed the 9 other theories on mammoth extinctions due to space considerations ]
Why Did It Get So Cold So Quickly?
Let’s put aside all possible explanations for the frozen mammoths and just ask what must happen for atmospheric temperatures to drop to at least -150°F (so rapidly that large animals and the food in their warm bodies are preserved).
Temperatures can drop for several reasons: expansion of a gas, evaporation of a liquid, chemical reactions, reduction of heat from the Sun, or the transfer of heat. First, let’s eliminate a few possibilities. Chemical reactions within the atmosphere have trivial thermal consequences. Could the Sun have suddenly put out less heat, thereby lowering the temperature of Siberia and Alaska? That happens every night, but temperatures drop too slowly.
If heat was transferred away from Siberia and Alaska, where and how was it transferred? Heat, which always travels from hot bodies to cold bodies, is transferred by three means: conduction, radiation, and convection. Conduction mainly applies to solids, as when heat travels (conducts) along a metal rod whose tip is held in a fire. Conduction would not play a big role for a large volume of gas such as the atmosphere. Radiation transfers too little heat too slowly at atmospheric temperatures.
Convection occurs when a moving fluid (liquid or gas) transfers heat from a hot to a cold region. For example, heat is transferred by convection up a chimney. The heat is transported from the hot air just above the fire to the cold air outside the chimney. If, at one time, Siberia and Alaska cooled to -150°F by convection, an even colder region had to absorb the heat; engineers call this a heat sink. Finding a supercold sink would be even more difficult than explaining a temperature drop to only -150°F. No sufficiently cold sink exists in or below the atmosphere, but such a sink lies above the atmosphere—in the vacuum of space—where temperatures are much colder than -150°F. This may answer the “where” question.
We could not eliminate the two possibilities highlighted above: expansion of a gas, and evaporation of a liquid. Both would drop temperatures drastically if enough water was very rapidly accelerated out of the atmosphere. That is precisely what the fountains of the great deep did. By the end of Part II of this book, you will see that nuclear energy provided astonishing accelerations and expansions of supercritical water into outer space, dropping the temperatures in most of the fountains to almost absolute zero (-460°F)! This then answers the difficult “how” and “where” questions.”