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.

  • Matters Arising
  • Published:

Climate did not drive Common Era Maldivian sea-level lowstands

Nature Geoscience volume 14, pages 273–275 (2021)Cite this article

Subjects

Matters Arising to this article was published on 22 April 2021

The Original Article was published on 16 December 2019

arising from P. S. Kench et al. Nat. Geosci. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-019-0503-7 (2019)

Reconstructions of Common Era sea level are informative of relationships between sea level and natural climate variability, and the uniqueness of modern sea-level rise1. Kench et al.2 recently reconstructed Common Era sea level in the Maldives, Indian Ocean, using corals, and reported periods of 150–500 years when sea level fell and rose at average rates of 2.7–4.3 mm yr−1, which they attributed to ocean cooling and warming inferred from reconstructions of sea-surface temperature (SST) and radiative forcing (Fig. 2 of ref. 2). We challenge their interpretation, using principles of sea-level physics to argue that pre-industrial radiative forcing and SST changes were insufficient to cause thermosteric sea-level (TSL) trends as large as reported for the Maldives2. Our results support the paradigm that modern rates and magnitudes of sea-level rise due to climate change are unprecedented during the Common Era3,4.

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

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

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

Fig. 1: Pre-industrial radiative forcing and SST changes.
Fig. 2: Post-industrial sea-level changes near the Maldives.

Data availability

Temperature-sensitive Common Era proxy records from the PAGES2k project12 were taken from the current data version available from the National Climatic Data Center website on 22 Jan 2020 (www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/pages2k/pages2k-temperature-v2-2017/). Only low-resolution oceanic data (‘O2kLR’) covering most of the Common Era in the study area were used. Numerical codes for the circulation model from ref. 11 are available for download from G.G.’s website (https://www2.whoi.edu/staff/ggebbie/). Total solar irradiance during the Holocene from ref. 5 was downloaded from the National Climatic Data Center server on 3 Feb 2020 (https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/climate_forcing/solar_variability/steinhilber2009tsi.txt). The estimates of volcanic aerosol forcing from ref. 6 are as provided in the online version of the paper as of 3 Feb 2020 (https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14565). The tide-gauge sea-level data were extracted from the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level database13 on 24 Feb 2020 (https://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/). Source data are provided with this paper.

References

  1. Kemp, A. C. et al. Paleo constraints on future sea-level rise. Curr. Clim. Change Rep. 1, 205–215 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Kench, P. S. et al. Climate-forced sea-level lowstands in the Indian Ocean during the last two millennia. Nat. Geosci. 13, 61–64 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Kemp, A. C. et al. Climate related sea-level variations over the past two millennia. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 108, 11017–11022 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Kopp, R. E. et al. Temperature-driven global sea-level variability in the Common Era. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 113, E1434–E1441 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Steinhilber, F. et al. Total solar irradiance during the Holocene. Geophys. Res. Lett. 36, L19704 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Sigl, M. et al. Timing and climate forcing of volcanic eruptions for the past 2,500 years. Nature 523, 543–549 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Church, J. A. et al. Significant decadal-scale impact of volcanic eruptions on sea level and ocean heat content. Nature 438, 74–77 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Gleckler, P. J. et al. Krakatoa lives: the effect of volcanic eruptions on ocean heat content and thermal expansion. Geophys. Res. Lett. 33, L17702 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Zanna, L. et al. Global reconstruction of historical ocean heat storage and transport. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 116, 1126–1131 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Gebbie, G. & Huybers, P. The Little Ice Age and 20th-century deep Pacific cooling. Science 363, 70–74 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Gebbie, G. & Huybers, P. The mean age of ocean waters inferred from radiocarbon observations: sensitivity to surface sources and accounting for mixing histories. J. Phys. Oceanogr. 42, 291–305 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Emile-Geay, J. et al. A global multiproxy database for temperature reconstructions of the Common Era. Sci. Data 4, 170088 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Holgate, S. J. et al. New data systems and products at the permanent service for mean sea level. J. Coast. Res. 29, 493–504 (2013).

    Google Scholar 

  14. Tamisiea, M. E. & Mitrovica, J. X. The moving boundaries of sea level change: understanding the origins of geographic variability. Oceanography 24, 24–39 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

C.G.P. acknowledges support from NSF grant OCE-2002485, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Endowed Fund for Innovative Research and the Joint Initiative Awards Fund from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. G.G. acknowledges support from NSF grant OCE-1760958. A.J.M. acknowledges support from the National Research Foundation Singapore and the Singapore Ministry of Education under the Research Centres of Excellence initiative, and also from the National Research Foundation Singapore under its NRF Fellowship scheme (Award NRF-NRFF11-2019-0008). We thank P. Kench for helpful conversations on an earlier version of the manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physical Oceanography, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, USA

    Christopher G. Piecuch & Geoffrey Gebbie

  2. Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences, Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA

    Andrew C. Kemp

  3. Earth Observatory of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

    Aron J. Meltzner

  4. Asian School of the Environment, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

    Aron J. Meltzner

Authors
  1. Christopher G. Piecuch
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Andrew C. Kemp
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Geoffrey Gebbie
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Aron J. Meltzner
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

C.G.P., A.C.K. and G.G. conceived the study. All of the authors designed methods and analysed data. C.G.P. wrote the manuscript with input from A.C.K., G.G. and A.J.M.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christopher G. Piecuch.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Peer review information Nature Geoscience thanks Anthony Purcell and Alex Thomas for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editor: James Super. 

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Discussion, Figs. 1–5, and Table 1.

Supplementary Data 1

Supplementary Data relating to Fig. 1 and Supplementary Fig. 2.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Piecuch, C.G., Kemp, A.C., Gebbie, G. et al. Climate did not drive Common Era Maldivian sea-level lowstands. Nat. Geosci. 14, 273–275 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-021-00731-2

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-021-00731-2

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced 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