Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Letter
  • Published:

Constraints on future sea-level rise from past sea-level change

A Retraction to this article was published on 21 February 2010

This article has been updated

Abstract

It is difficult to project sea-level rise in response to warming climates by the end of the century, especially because the response of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets to warming is not well understood1. However, sea-level fluctuations in response to changing climate have been reconstructed for the past 22,000 years from fossil data, a period that covers the transition from the Last Glacial Maximum to the warm Holocene interglacial period. Here we present a simple model of the integrated sea-level response to temperature change that implicitly includes contributions from the thermal expansion and the reduction of continental ice. Our model explains much of the centennial-scale variability observed over the past 22,000 years, and estimates 4–24 cm of sea-level rise during the twentieth century, in agreement with the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change1 (IPCC). In response to the minimum (1.1 C) and maximum (6.4 C) warming projected for AD 2100 by the IPCC models, our model predicts 7 and 82 cm of sea-level rise by the end of the twenty-first century, respectively. The range of sea-level rise is slightly larger than the estimates from the IPCC models of 18–76 cm, but is sufficiently similar to increase confidence in the projections.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: The best fit equilibrium sea-level curve for the simulations considered as a function of ΔT.
Figure 2: Model simulation of the termination.
Figure 3: Model projections of sea-level rise for the twenty-first century.

Similar content being viewed by others

Change history

  • 21 February 2010

    This Letter has been retracted. See the full retraction notice for details.

References

  1. IPCC. in Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis (eds Solomon, S.et al.) (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007).

  2. Alley, R. B., Clark, P. U., Huybrechts, P. & Joughin, I. Ice-sheet and sea-level changes. Science 310, 456–460 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Otto-Bliesner, B. L. et al. Simulating Arctic climate warmth and icefield retreat in the last interglaciation. Science 311, 1751–1753 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Gregory, J. M. & Huybrechts, P. Ice-sheet contributions to future sea-level change. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 364, 1709–1731 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Gregory, J. M., Lowe, J. A. & Tett, S. B. T. Simulated global-mean sea-level changes over the last half-millennium. J. Clim. 19, 4576–4591 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Rahmstorf, S. A semi-empirical approach to projecting future sea-level rise. Science 315, 368–370 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Grinsted, A., Moore, J. C. & Jevrejeva, S. Reconstructing sea level from paleo and projected temperatures 200–2100 AD. Clim. Dyn. 10.1007/s00382-008-0507-2 (2009).

  8. North, G. R. The small ice cap instability in diffusive climate models. J. Atmos. Sci. 41, 3390–3395 (1984).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Pollard, D. & DeConto, R. M. Hysteresis in Cenozoic Antarctic ice sheet variations. Glob. Planet. Change 45, 9–21 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Waelbroeck, C. et al. Sea-level and deep water temperature changes derived from benthic foraminifera isotopic records. Quat. Sci. Res. 21, 295–305 (2002).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Siddall, M. et al. Sea-level fluctuations during the last glacial cycle. Nature 423, 853–858 (2003).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Rohling, E. J. et al. Antarctic temperature and global sea level closely coupled over the last five glacial cycles. Nature Geosci. 2, 500–504 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Cutler, K. B. et al. Rapid sea-level fall and deep-ocean temperature change since the last interglacial period. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 206, 253–271 (2003).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Stirling, C. H., Esat, T. M., Lambeck, K. & McCulloch, M. T. Timing and duration of the last interglacial: Evidence for a restricted interval of widespread coral reef growth. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 160, 745–762 (1998).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Muhs, D. R. Evidence for the timing and duration of the last interglacial period from high-precision uranium-series ages of corals on tectonically stable coastlines. Quat. Res. 58, 36–40 (2002).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Weertman, J. Rate of growth or shrinkage of nonequilibrium ice sheets. J. Glaciol. 6, 145–158 (1964).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. NGRIP members, High-resolution record of Northern Hemisphere climate extending into the last interglacial period. Nature 431, 147–151 (2004).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. EPICA Members, Eight glacial cycles from an Antarctic ice core. Nature 429, 623–628 (2004).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Church, J. A. et al. in Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis (eds Houghton, J. T. et al.) 639–694 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2001).

    Google Scholar 

  20. Peltier, W. R. & Fairbanks, R. G. Global glacial ice volume and Last Glacial Maximum duration from an extended Barbados sea level record. Quat. Sci. Rev. 25, 3322–3337 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Yokoyama, Y., Lambeck, K., De Deckker, P., Johnston, P. & Fifield, L. K. Timing of the Last Glacial Maximum from observed sea-level minima. Nature 406, 713–716 (2000).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Masson-Delmotte, V. et al. Past and future polar amplification of climate change: Climate model intercomparisons and ice-core constraints. Clim. Dyn. 26, 513–529 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Hansen, J. et al. Climate change and trace gases. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 365, 1925–1954 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Schellmann, G. & Radtke, U. A revised morpho and chronostratigraphy of the late and middle Pleistocene coral reef terraces on Southern Barbados (West Indies). Earth Sci. Rev. 64, 157–187 (2004).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Lear, C. H. in Perspectives on Climate Change: Marrying the Signal from Computer Models and Biological Proxies (eds Haywood, W. M. et al.) 313–322 (The Micropalaeontological Society, Special Publications, The Geological Society, 2007).

    Book  Google Scholar 

  26. Dansgaard, W. et al. in Climate Processes and Climate Sensitivity Vol. 29 (eds Hansen, J. E. & Takahashi, T.) 288–298 (Geophys. Monogr. Ser., AGU, 1984).

    Book  Google Scholar 

  27. Siddall, M., Rohling, E. J., Thompson, W. G. & Waelbroeck, C. MIS 3 Sea-level fluctuations: Data synthesis and new outlook. Rev. Geophys. 46, RG4003 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Fleming, K. et al. Refining the eustatic sea-level curve since the Last Glacial Maximum using far- and intermediate-field sites. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 163, 327–342 (1998).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Domingues, C. M. et al. Improved estimates of upper-ocean warming and multi-decadal sea-level rise. Nature 453, 1090–1093 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

M.S. acknowledges support from Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory and the University of Bristol (LDEO and RCUK fellowships). Conversations with J. Shepherd and D. Pollard have been very useful in bringing this work together and it could not have been completed without their suggestions. Support from the Swiss National Science Foundation and the University of Bern (T.F.S.) and the US National Science Foundation (P.U.C.) is acknowledged.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

Initial concept: M.S.; development, refinement, writing: M.S., P.U.C., T.F.S.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mark Siddall.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Information (PDF 1073 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Siddall, M., Stocker, T. & Clark, P. Constraints on future sea-level rise from past sea-level change. Nature Geosci 2, 571–575 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo587

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo587

This article is cited by

Search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing