Magnitudes of sea-level lowstands of the past 500,000 years

Existing techniques for estimating natural fluctuations of sea level and global ice-volume from the recent geological past exploit fossil coral-reef terraces or oxygen-isotope records from benthic foraminifera. Fossil reefs reveal the magnitude of sea-level peaks (highstands) of the past million yea...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature (London) 1998-07, Vol.394 (6689), p.162-165
Main Authors: Rohling, E. J, Fenton, M, Jorissen, F. J, Bertrand, P, Ganssen, G, Caulet, J. P
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Antarctic ice sheet
Coral reefs
Earth sciences
Earth, ocean, space
Exact sciences and technology
Foraminifera
Fossils
Geology
Global sea level
Humanities and Social Sciences
Hydraulic control
Ice
Last Glacial Maximum
letter
Marine
Marine and continental quaternary
Marine geology
multidisciplinary
Oceanography
Oxygen
Science
Sea level
Sea level fluctuations
Surficial geology
Terraces
Water flow
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Summary:Existing techniques for estimating natural fluctuations of sea level and global ice-volume from the recent geological past exploit fossil coral-reef terraces or oxygen-isotope records from benthic foraminifera. Fossil reefs reveal the magnitude of sea-level peaks (highstands) of the past million years, but fail to produce significant values for minima (lowstands) before the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) about 20,000 years ago, a time at which sea level was about 120 m lower than it is today. The isotope method provides a continuous sea-level record for the past 140,000 years (ref. 5) (calibrated with fossil-reef data), but the realistic uncertainty in the sea-level estimates is around ±20 m. Here we present improved lowstand estimates-extending the record back to 500,000 years before present-using an independent method based on combining evidence of extreme high-salinity conditions in the glacial Red Sea with a simple hydraulic control model of water flow through the Strait of Bab-el-Mandab, which links the Red Sea to the open ocean. We find that the world can glaciate more intensely than during the LGM by up to an additional 20-m lowering of global sea-level. Such a 20-m difference is equivalent to a change in global ice-volume of the order of today's Greenland and West Antarctic ice-sheets.
ISSN:0028-0836
1476-4687
DOI:10.1038/28134