Undermines· strongYDIH-E016
Marlon et al. 2009: no continent-wide fire pulse at the onset
- what the source states
- A synthesis of sedimentary charcoal records across North America found biomass burning increasing gradually from glacial times through the deglaciation, with fire regimes responding to abrupt climate changes — and no continent-wide fire signal specific to the Younger Dryas onset.
- what we infer
- The unprejudiced baseline: a database built by the fire-history community for its own purposes, examined across this interval, shows climate-tracking fire — not a hemispheric conflagration. Any extraordinary-burning claim has to explain why the reference synthesis cannot see it.
- limitations
- Charcoal databases have taphonomic and chronological smoothing limits; a very short pulse could in principle be underrepresented.