The sea-level conundrum: Case studies from palaeo-archives

Ayako Abe-Ouchi, Morten Andersen, Fabrizio Antonioli, Jonathon Bamber, Edouard Bard, Jorie Clark, Peter Clark, Pierre Deschamps, Andrea Dutton, Mary Elliot, Christina Gallup, Natalya Gomez, Jonathan Gregory, Peter Huybers, Kenji Kawamura, Meredith Kelly, Kurt Lambeck, Tom Lowell, Jerry Mitrovica, Bette Otto-BliesnerDavid Richards, Mark Siddall, Jenny Stanford, Claudine Stirling, Thomas Stocker, Alex Thomas, Bill Thompson, Torbjörn Törnqvist, Natalia Vazquez Riveiros, Claire Waelbroeck, Yusuke Yokoyama, Shiyong Yu

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

35 Scopus citations

Abstract

Uncertainties in sea-level projections for the 21st century have focused ice sheet modelling efforts to include the processes that are thought to be contributing to the recently observed rapid changes at ice sheet margins. This effort is still in its infancy, however, leaving us unable to make reliable predictions of ice sheet responses to a warming climate if such glacier accelerations were to increase in size and frequency. The geological record, however, has long identified examples of nonlinear ice sheet response to climate forcing (Shackleton NJ, Opdyke ND. 1973. Oxygen isotope and paleomagnetic stratigraphy of equatorial Pacific core V28-239, late Pliocene to latest Pleistocene. Geological Society of America Memoirs 145: 449-464; Fairbanks RG. 1989. A 17,000 year glacioeustatic sea level record: influence of glacial melting rates on the Younger Dryas event and deep ocean circulation. Nature 342: 637-642; Bard E, Hamelin B, Arnold M, Montaggioni L, Cabioch G, Faure G, Rougerie F. 1996. Sea level record from Tahiti corals and the timing of deglacial meltwater discharge. Nature 382: 241-244), thus suggesting an alternative strategy for constraining the rate and magnitude of sea-level change that we might expect by the end of this century.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)19-25
Number of pages7
JournalJournal of Quaternary Science
Volume25
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 2010

Keywords

  • Climate change
  • Ice sheets
  • Sea level

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'The sea-level conundrum: Case studies from palaeo-archives'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this