Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
6445557 | Quaternary Science Reviews | 2014 | 16 Pages |
Abstract
Sea-level changes record changes in the mass balance of ice sheets and mountain glaciers, as well as dynamic ocean-atmosphere processes. Unravelling the contribution of each of these mechanisms on Late Holocene timescales ideally requires observations from a number of sites on several coasts within one or more oceans. We present the first 2000 year-long continuous salt marsh-based reconstructions of relative sea-level (RSL) change from the eastern North Atlantic and uniquely from a slowly uplifting coastline. We develop three RSL histories from two sites in north west Scotland to test for regional changes in sea-level tendency (a positive tendency indicating an increase in the proximity of marine conditions and a negative tendency the reverse), whilst at the same time highlighting methodological issues, including the problems of dataset noise when applying transfer functions to fossil salt-marsh sequences. The records show that RSL has been stable (±0.4 m) during the last two millennia, and that the regional sea-level tendency has been negative throughout most of the record lengths. A recent switch in the biostratigraphy of all three records, indicating a regional positive tendency, means we cannot reject the hypothesis of a 20th century sea-level acceleration occurring in north west Scotland that must have exceeded the rate of background RSL fall (â0.4 mm yrâ1), but this signal appears muted and later than recorded from the western North Atlantic.
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering
Earth and Planetary Sciences
Geology
Authors
Natasha L.M. Barlow, Antony J. Long, Margot H. Saher, W. Roland Gehrels, Mark H. Garnett, Rob G. Scaife,