The open water that eventually forms in the tropics absorbs more solar energy and initiates a faster rise in global temperatures. In a matter of centuries, a brutally hot, wet world will supplant the deep freeze. As tropical oceans thaw, seawater evaporates and works along with carbon dioxide to produce even more intense greenhouse conditions. Surface temperatures soar to more than 50 degrees Celsius, driving an intense cycle of evaporation and rainfall. Torrents of carbonic acid rain erode the rock debris left in the wake of the retreating glaciers.
Swollen rivers wash bicarbonate and other ions into the oceans, where they form carbonate sediment.