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The sea‐level conundrum: case studies from palaeo‐archives
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
journal of quaternary science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.142
H-Index - 94
eISSN - 1099-1417
pISSN - 0267-8179
DOI - 10.1002/jqs.1270
Subject(s) - geology , younger dryas , ice sheet , meltwater , oceanography , sea level , greenland ice sheet , pleistocene , glacier , ice sheet model , glacial period , ice core , geologic record , holocene , paleontology , climatology , physical geography , sea ice , arctic ice pack , antarctic sea ice , geography
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 glacio‐eustatic 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. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.