Centennial- to millennial-scale sea-level change during the Holocene and Last Interglacial periods

Abstract

149 SCIENCE HIGHLIGHTS: CENTENNIAL TO MILLENNIAL CLIMATE VARIABILITY sea-level history. Nonetheless, numerous fossil reef sites clearly record at least two stratigraphically distinct generations of reef growth. These generations of reef growth often also display significant differences in their post-depositional diagenesis and coral taphonomy that would support the interpretation of a different post-depositional history before the reefs were exposed during the While it is premature to provide a definitive answer regarding the number of sea-level of sea-level change associated with these millennial-scale sea-level oscillations, the body of evidence points towards a more variable sea-level history than in the Holocene. changes in ice sheets seem to have the potential to explain the inferred multi-meter-scale changes. Existing ice-sheet evidence points towards a monotonic retreat of the Greenland ice sheet that can explain only a fraction of the overall sea-level highstand sheet is inconclusive. Middle to Late Holocene sea-level variability In general, Holocene sea-level reconstructions have considerably less uncertainty both in time and the magnitude of changes, and hence are more likely to be able to resolve finer details in sea-level changes. Holocene sea-level proxy records are more abundant than in past interglacial stages, and considerable effort has gone into developing standardized databases that enable formal statistical analysis at both regional Following the end of the final wastage of sea-level rise slowed overall but continued to rise into the late Holocene, reflecting continued retreat of the Antarctic ice sheet the highest-precision proxies are derived from salt-marsh sediments and microfossil assemblages, which can yield decimeter-scale vertical resolution and century-or sub-century-scale temporal resolution. Taking advantage of the compilation of well-structured regional and global databases, to both develop continuous records at individual locations and also estimate the overall spatio-temporal field of relative sea level last two thousand years, a statistically identified common global sea-level signal exhibits decimeter-scale fluctuations that partially correlate with reconstructed global-mean mm a global sea-level fall leading into the fall between ocean thermal contraction and cryospheric growth is uncertain. Into the Anthropocene A significant global sea-level acceleration scale, the timing of the sea-level acceleration varies broadly, with emergence above the rate of change due to glacial-isostatic synchronous expansion of coal combustion disentangle natural and anthropogenic fac-global mean temperature and global-mean of the observed rise attributable the effects of twentieth-century global warming. The global-mean sea-level signal of warming of global-mean sea-level rise brought the world outside the realm of late-Holocene experience. With global-mean surface temperature now close to that of the researchers have speculated that the world may be committed to long-term global Might we also see a return to the enigmatic multi-meter, millennial sea-level dynamism that may have characterized that stage?