Editor's Summary
16 April 2009
An interglacial jump in sea level
The potential for future rapid sea-level rise is perhaps the greatest threat from global warming. But the question of whether recent ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica is the first indication of such a rise is difficult to answer given the limited duration of the instrumental record. New evidence from an exceptionally exposed fossil reef in the Xcaret theme park in Mexico provides a detailed picture of the development of reef terraces, erosion surfaces and sea-level excursions in the region during the last interglacial. A combination of precise uranium-series dating and stratigraphic analysis, together with comparison with coral ages elsewhere, suggests that a sea-level jump of 2 to 3 metres occurred about 121,000 years ago, consistent with an episode of ice-sheet instability towards the end of the last interglacial. On that evidence, sustained rapid ice loss and sea-level rise in the near future are possible.
Authors: Abstractions
doi:10.1038/7240805b
Letter: Rapid sea-level rise and reef back-stepping at the close of the last interglacial highstand
Paul Blanchon, Anton Eisenhauer, Jan Fietzke & Volker Liebetrau
doi:10.1038/nature07933
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (707K) | Supplementary information
