John Wheeler: A recent study projects a mass extinction in 250 million years

FARGO — Due to convective currents in the molten rock deep inside the planet, Earth’s continents move around on the surface. Their rate of movement is of the same order that fingernails grow, which is slow but significant over millions of years. About 250 million years from now, most of Earth’s land mass is expected to be joined in one supercontinent which has been dubbed, “Pangaea Ultima.”

A recent study in Nature Geoscience headed by Alexander Farnsworth at the University of Bristol, United Kingdom, modeled the climate for this future world, and found that warming from increased volcanic activity and the larger, interconnected land mass will result in the formation of a massive desert over most of the land on Earth, likely causing a mass extinction of most, but not all, forms of life. A similar mass extinction occurred around 200 million years ago near the end of the Triassic period. Dinosaurs and early mammals were among the few types of animals which survived.

John Wheeler is Chief Meteorologist for WDAY, a position he has had since May of 1985. Wheeler grew up in the South, in Louisiana and Alabama, and cites his family’s move to the Midwest as important to developing his fascination with weather and climate. Wheeler lived in Wisconsin and Iowa as a teenager. He attended Iowa State University and achieved a B.S. degree in Meteorology in 1984. Wheeler worked about a year at WOI-TV in central Iowa before moving to Fargo and WDAY..