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Scientists from Rice University and Texas AM University-Corpus Christi’s Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies have discovered that Earth’s sea level did not rise steadily but rather in sharp, punctuated bursts when the planet’s glaciers melted during the period of global warming at the close of the last ice age. The researchers found fossil evidence in drowned reefs offshore Texas that showed sea level rose in several bursts ranging in length from a few decades to one century.
The findings appear today in Nature Communications.
“What these fossil reefs show is that the last time Earth warmed like it is today, sea level did not rise steadily,” said Rice marine geologist André Droxler, a study co-author. “Instead, sea level rose quite fast, paused, and then shot up again in another burst and so on.
“This has profound implications for the future study of sea-level rise,” he said.
Because scientists did not previously have specific evidence of punctuated decade-scale sea-level rise, they had little choice but to present the risks of sea-level rise in a linear, per-year format, Droxler said. For example, the International Panel on Climate Change, the authoritative scientific source about the impacts of human-induced climate change, “had to simply take the projected rise for a century, divide by 100 and say, ‘We expect sea level to rise this much per year,’” he said.
Read more at Rice University
Image: A high-resolution 3-D map of Southern Bank off the South Texas coast clearly reveals terraces, which are a characteristic coral reef response to rising sea level. (Image courtesy of P. Khanna/Rice University)
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