Bolide impacts, acid rain, and biospheric traumas at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary

Two plausible projectiles are considered: an ice-rich long-period comet and a much smaller rock-metal asteroid. In the framework of a proposal addressed by Lewis et al. (1982), it is shown that, while the impact projectiles themselves do not shock-heat the atmosphere very extensively, the supersonic plume of water vapor and rock produced on impact does shock the atmosphere up to global scales and the shock is of sufficient intensity to produce abundant nitric oxide. For example, an ice-rich long-period comet with a mass of 1.25 x 10 to the 16th kg and a velocity of 65 km/s striking the earth would produce about 7 x 10 to the 40th molecules NO through shock-heating of the atmosphere by the high-velocity ejecta plume fragments. Specific attention is given to the fraction of the atmosphere shock-heated, the global circulation of the nitrogen oxides, the effects of the ejecta plume water on acid rain (AR) predictions, the effects of AR on continental soils, the relationship between AR production rates and the total amount of acid needed to acidify the surface oceans, and the longevity of the oceanic acidity event and the exhaled CO2 event and their implications for the environment in the first millenia or so after the impact.