Reply to Castro et al. 2018 on “Holocene paleo-sea level changes along the coast of Rio de Janeiro, southern Brazil”

Abstract

Discussions are useful to the advance of science, and we appreciate the opportunity to discuss the paper by Castro et al. (2014) for the second time. Here we maintain the interpretations presented in our discussion paper (Angulo et al. 2016). In the discussion paper we emphasized that the vertical position of a paleo-sea level indicator is not the position of the paleo-sea level. We pointed out that: (1) to reconstruct paleo-sea levels it is crucial to determine the vertical distance between the indicators to their present homologous one; (2) margin of errors can only be established if considering the indicator’s intrinsic characteristics and (3) the interpretation of a sea level 3.0 to 4.5 m below the present one at 11.9 to-11.1 ka BP is in strong contradiction with worldwide established data and would require a detailed discussion. We consider that Castro et al. (2018) do not properly address or answer the comments we made in the discussion paper. More work and discussions are necessary to elucidate several questions that still remain about the sea level behavior in the Holocene.