Wednesday, 16 April 2025

Filling the Mediterranean - a Megaflood of Articles

 Filling the Mediterranean - a Megaflood of Articles

It has probably not escaped your notice that there has been a plethora of articles in the last few days about the flooding of the Mediterranean when the barrier at Gibraltar was breached. It has been on YouTube HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and many more; on various web sites such as HERE and HERE. It has also featured on my FAVOURITE PODCAST. I could go on but you get the picture.

All these eruptions of interest, except the podcast, are due to THIS PAPER which discusses, in some depth, the geomorphological results of the refilling of the Mediterranean, especially the part east of Sicily.

I first became aware of the drying of the Mediterranean when I read about the difficulty the builders of the Aswan Dam had in finding hard rock for the dams foundations. They discovered that there was a deep canyon along the Nile caused by the river eroding downwards to a base level far below the present Mediterranean. The canyon had been filled in with sediments deposited when the base level rose back to its present position. 

The interest in the refilling shows the publics interest in exciting stories and the stories don't get any more exciting than the Gibraltar waterfall!
 

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