A fact from Zanclean flood appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 9 February 2018 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
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There have been a few edits to the exact number for the max water discharge during the flood. Would it be better to just give a ballpark, easy-to-grasp description instead? For example, "...with a discharge of up to about 100 million cubic meters of water per second". (The article links to the 2009 Nature paper for the exact number, if the reader wants that.) Tinybike (talk) 21:14, 29 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with the change except for the expression "up to about". The source says "about", the article says "up to". We should follow the source and say "about". Dudley Miles (talk) 09:34, 30 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, I reverted some of the changes because I did not find the numbers in the source. Since it seems you are all OK with the 1.27 number, I am probably in the wrong here but could you please quote where does that 1.27 come from? I cannot locate the "Table 1 on p. 4 SI of Garcia-Castellanos 2009" mentioned in Tinybike's edit summary, sorry. The source says on page 780 (left): "The peak discharge across the Gibraltar Strait reached more than 108 m3/s at a speed of over 40 m/s, only months before flood completion" (near the "Amazon mean discharge is only" 1.5×105 comparison). Similarly in the abstract/summary on the "first" page of the article ("imply discharges of about" 108 m3/s, where it also says "three orders of magnitude larger than the present Amazon River". Thanks, WikiHannibal (talk) 14:15, 30 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Dudley, I think "up to" is appropriate because it's specifically referring to a *maximum* water discharge.
That said, since these are just model parameters, I think it would probably be better to just give an approximate, easy-to-grok number instead. Tinybike (talk) 18:49, 30 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. The link should be added to the sentence, then. However, I still prefer the textual quotes from the article. (Why does not the article speak about 1.27 but uses 1 instead?) And the Amazon comparison is linked to that. WikiHannibal (talk) 19:18, 30 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I think the article uses an approximate number because these are just model parameters. i.e., they are "exact" in the sense that these are the precise values used in the model, but the model itself is just a rough approximation of a very complicated event. So IMO using the "about 100 million cubic meters" wording is appropriate, since it's in accordance with the "let's find the right order-of-magnitude" spirit of this sort of model. (At least, that's how I read it...this isn't my field, though!) Tinybike (talk) 20:39, 30 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Tinybike "up to" is fine if the figures justify it. "up to about" is confused and should not be used. Also the quote above says "more than 108 m3/s", more than, not up to. Dudley Miles (talk) 19:05, 30 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The figures do justify it. It's a *maximum* discharge rate, i.e. the highest possible value. All lower values are also allowed. (It says "more than 108 m3/s" because the exact value they used was 1.27x108 m3/s.) Tinybike (talk) 19:17, 30 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I do not have access to the source, but if the exact figure they used was 1.27x108 m3/s then up to 108 m3/s is wrong. It could be between the two figures and thus more than 108 m3/s. However, the figures are from one source and will no doubt be subject to revision. It is much better just to say about or approximately the figure, which allows for future revision up or down. Dudley Miles (talk) 19:41, 30 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
There's a sentence in the article which needs changing. The sentence in the intro is "Sea level rise in the basin may have reached rates at times greater than ten metres per day (thirty feet per day)." However, in reference 10 ("Sedimentary record of pre-quaternary tsunamis..") it lists the number as 10 meters/week. I haven't read all the papers yet, but that seems like a problem.
Optimally someone would update the units and add the reference, but I'm not much of a wikipedia editor so I couldn't figure out how to do either thing! So this is a placeholder in case my best intentions to come back and figure out how to fix this don't pan out. Maronnax (talk) 17:01, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting! A little glancing and (no surprise) this all comes from modeling outputs. My take is that newer models came out (the 10m/week came from a paper published a couple years after the first reference) and the numbers got updated and some people started using them. For reference, the update seems to have originated in "Messinian salinity crisis regulated by competing tectonics and erosion at the Gibraltar Arc" by Garcia-Castellanos & A. Villasen, Nature, 2011. Maronnax (talk) 18:38, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Quick napkin calculation. Max depth of the med is 5267m. Mean is 1500m. If we assume this happens over 3 years the first spot would have filled at 35m/week==5m/day and I could believe that at some point it could have peaked as high as 10m/day. 1500m/150weeks = 10m/week for the average spot in the med. I'm guessing this is the discrepancy. I'm going to read some more and see if this works out. Will possibly look to clarify that sentence (e.g. "average of 1.5m/day with a maximum of 10m/day in places) although I need to understand some dynamics I don't just yet before I propose something. Maronnax (talk) 18:55, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
