scholarly journals Cancelation of Deglacial Thermosteric Sea Level Rise by a Barosteric Effect

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (12) ◽  
pp. 3623-3639
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Gebbie

AbstractSea level rise over the last deglaciation is dominated by the mass of freshwater added to the oceans by the melting of the great ice sheets. While the steric effect of changing seawater density is secondary over the last 20 000 years, processes connected to deglacial warming, the redistribution of salt, and the pressure load of meltwater all influence sea level rise by more than a meter. Here we develop a diagnostic for steric effects that is valid when oceanic mass is changing. This diagnostic accounts for seawater compression due to the added overlying pressure of glacial meltwater, which is here defined to be a barosteric effect. Analysis of three-dimensional global seawater reconstructions of the last deglaciation indicates that thermosteric height change (1.0–1.5 m) is counteracted by barosteric (−1.9 m) and halosteric (from −0.4 to 0.0 m) effects. The total deglacial steric effect from −0.7 to −1.1 m has the opposite sign of analyses that assume that thermosteric expansion is dominant. Despite the vertical oceanic structure not being well constrained during the Last Glacial Maximum, net seawater contraction appears robust as it occurs in four reconstructions that were produced using different paleoceanographic datasets. Calculations that do not account for changes in ocean pressure give the misleading impression that steric effects enhanced deglacial sea level rise.

1969 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 21-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carina Bendixen ◽  
Jørn Bo Jensen ◽  
Ole Bennike ◽  
Lars Ole Boldreel

The Kattegat region is located in the wrench zone between the Fennoscandian shield and the Danish Basin that has repeatedly been tectonically active. The latest ice advances during the Quaternary in the southern part of Kattegat were from the north-east, east and south-east (Larsen et al. 2009). The last deglaciation took place at c. 18 to 17 ka BP (Lagerlund & Houmark-Nielsen 1993; Houmark-Nielsen et al. 2012) and was followed by inundation of the sea that formed a palaeo-Kattegat (Conradsen 1995) with a sea level that was relatively high because of glacio-isostatic depression. Around 17 ka BP, the ice margin retreated to the Øresund region and meltwater from the retreating ice drained into Kattegat. Over the next millennia, the region was characterised by regression because the isostatic rebound of the crust surpassed the ongoing eustatic sea-level rise, and a regional lowstand followed at the late glacial to Holocene transition (Mörner 1969; Thiede 1987; Lagerlund & Houmark-Nielsen 1993; Jensen et al. 2002a, b).


Author(s):  
Jessica Kelln ◽  
Sönke Dangendorf ◽  
Jürgen Jensen ◽  
Justus Patzke ◽  
Wolfgang Niemeier ◽  
...  

Global mean sea level has risen over the 20th century (Hay et al. 2015; Dangendorf et al. 2017) and under sustained greenhouse gas emissions it is projected to further accelerate throughout the 21st century (Church et al. 2013) with large spatial variations, significantly threatening coastal communities. Locally the effects of geocentric (sometimes also referred to absolute) sea level rise can further be amplified by vertical land motion (VLM) due to natural adjustments of the solid earth to the melting of the large ice-sheets during the last deglaciation (GIA) or local anthropogenic interventions such as groundwater or gas withdrawal (e.g. Santamaría-Gómez et al. 2017). Both, the observed and projected geocentric sea level rise as well as VLM are critically important for coastal planning and engineering, since only their combined effect determines the total threat of coastal flooding at specific locations. Furthermore, due large spatial variability of sea level, information is required not only at isolated tide gauge (TG) locations but also along the coastline stretches in between.


Eos ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Hornyak

Meltwater pulse 1A, a period of rapid sea level rise after the last deglaciation, was powered by melting ice from North America and Scandinavia, according to new research.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiona D. Hibbert ◽  
Felicity Williams ◽  
Eelco Rohling

<p>Geologically recorded sea-level variations represent the sum total of all contributing processes, be it known or unknown, and may thus help in finding the full range of future sea-level rise. Significant sea-level-rise contributions from both northern and southern ice sheets are not unprecedented in the geological record and offer a well-constrained range of natural scenarios from intervals during which ice volumes were similar to or smaller than present (i.e., interglacial periods), to intervals during which total ice volume was greater (i.e., glacial periods).</p><p>The last deglaciation is the most recent period of widespread destabilisation and collapse of major continental ice sheets. Records spanning the last deglaciation (as well as the ice volume maxima) are few, fragmentary and seemingly inconsistent (e.g., the timing and magnitude of melt-water pulses), in part due to locational (tectonic and glacio-isostatic) as well as modern analogue considerations (e.g., palaeo-water depth or facies formation depth). We present a new synthesis of sea-level indicators, with particular emphasis on the geological and biological context, as well as the uncertainties of each record. Using this new compilation and the novel application of statistical methods (trans-dimensional change-point analysis, which avoids “overfitting” of noise in the data), we will assess global ice-volume changes, sea-level fluctuations and changes in climate during the last deglaciation. Finally, we discuss the implications of these uncertainties on our ability to constrain past cryosphere changes.</p>


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Javier Blasco ◽  
Ilaria Tabone ◽  
Daniel Moreno ◽  
Jorge Alvarez-Solas ◽  
Alexander Robinson ◽  
...  

<p>Projections of the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) contribution to future global sea-level rise are highly uncertain, partly due to the potential threat of a collapse of the marine sectors of the AIS. However, whether the inherent instability of such sectors is already underway or is still far away from being triggered remains elusive. One reason for ambiguity in results relies on the uncertainty of basal conditions. Whereas high basal friction can potentially prevent a collapse of the marine zones of the AIS, low basal friction can promote such a process. In addition, future sea-level projections from the AIS are generally run from an equilibrated present-day (PD) state tuned to observational data. However, this procedure neglects the thermal memory of the ice sheet. Furthermore, there is no apparent reason for ruling out that the PD may be subject to a natural drift since the onset of the last deglaciation (~20 kyr BP). Here we study the uncertainty in sea-level projections by investigating the response of the AIS to different RCP scenarios for four different basal-dragging laws. For this purpose we use a three-dimensional ice-sheet-shelf model that is spun up from a deglaciation. Model parameters of all friction laws have been optimized to simulate a realistic PD. In addition, we study the response of the AIS to a sudden CO<sub>2</sub> drop to investigate the potential irreversibility of the ice sheet depending on the RCP scenario and friction law.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalya Gomez ◽  
Michael Weber ◽  
Peter Clark ◽  
Jerry Mitrovica ◽  
Holly Han

<p>A longstanding hypothesis for near-synchronous evolution of global ice sheets over ice-age cycles invokes an interhemispheric sea-level forcing whereby sea-level rise due to ice loss in the Northern Hemisphere in response to insolation and greenhouse gas forcing causes grounding-line retreat of marine-based sectors of the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS). Recent studies have shown that the AIS experienced substantial millennial-scale variability during and after the last deglaciation, with several times of recorded increased iceberg flux and grounding line retreat coinciding, within uncertainty, with well documented global sea-level rise events, providing further evidence of this sea-level forcing. However, the sea level changes associated with ice sheet mass loss are strongly nonuniform due to gravitational, deformational and Earth rotational effects, suggesting that the response of the AIS to Northern Hemisphere sea-level forcing is more complicated than previously modelled.</p><p>We adopt an ice-sheet model coupled to a global sea-level model to show that a large or rapid Northern Hemisphere sea-level forcing enhances grounding-line advance and associated mass gain of the AIS during glaciation, and grounding-line retreat and AIS mass loss during deglaciation. Relative to models without these interactions, including the Northern Hemisphere sea-level forcing leads to a larger AIS volume during the Last Glacial Maximum (about 26,000 to 20,000 years ago), subsequent earlier grounding-line retreat and millennial-scale AIS variability throughout the last deglaciation. These findings are consistent with geologic reconstructions of the extent of the AIS during the Last Glacial Maximum and subsequent ice-sheet retreat, and with relative sea-level change in Antarctica. </p>


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