Department of Earth and Environmental Science

Examining the evidence for a recent acceleration in the rate of sea-level rise using combined instrumental and proxy data from the Atlantic coast of North American and Northwestern Europe

Whilst accelerated rates of sea-level rise are potentially one of the most devastating impacts of future climate change, our understanding of multi-decadal climate-ocean relationships is poor. Our research seeks to address this knowledge gap by combining tide gauge and high-precision geological reconstructions of relative sea-level. These reconstructions, developed using microfossil transfer functions, will be validated against historical records of change. The resulting composite records will have sufficient resolution and duration to detect any recent acceleration in the rate of sea level rise associated with elevated greenhouse gas concentrations.
Recent research from the western margins of the North Atlantic has provided the first indication that modern rates of relative sea level rise (last 100 years) in this region may be more rapid than the long-term rate of rise (over the last 800 – 1000 years), and that the timing of this acceleration may be indicative of a link with human-induce climate change. No such data exists for North Carolina, New Jersey or the Bay of Biscay, and our research seeks to address this imbalance.

This proposal seeks to address the fundamental question of how climate change influences the ocean over periods of decades to centuries, and how these variations in relative sea-level are manifest in coastal sedimentary sequences. Specifically, this project will examine the following key questions: (1) How has regional sea level changed during the last 500 years? (2) How do modern, instrumental rates of relative sea-level change compare with pre-industrial values? (3) Can regional relative sea-level changes be correlated with climate proxies or measurements, and if so, are these changes lagged or synchronous? (4) Have recent relative sea-level variations had a discernible impact on local coastal environments?