Climate Study Shows Sea Level Can Rise By 30 Feet Per Century During Ice Cap Meltdowns Bob Berwyn - SummitCountyVoice.com
go to original September 26, 2014

If sea levels rose to where they were during the last Interglacial Period, large parts of the Gulf of Mexico would be under water (red areas), including half of Florida and several Caribbean islands. (Jeremy Weiss/University of Arizona)

Melting ice caps caused global sea level to rise by up to 30 feet per century during the ending phases of the last five ice ages, researchers said, announcing results of a study that traces sea level fluctuations across a span of half a million years.

The record shows that sea level changes can happen quickly on a geological time scale, and that there were hundreds of smaller pulses in sea level in between the five major events. But the biggest changes in sea level happened after periods when ice sheets were much larger than today’s.

“The really fast rates of sea-level rise typically seem to have happened at the end of periods with exceptionally large ice sheets, when there was two or more times more ice on the Earth than today, said Dr Katharine Grant, with the Australian National University, Canberra.

“Time periods with less than twice the modern global ice volume show almost no indications of sea-level rise faster than about 2 metres per century. Those with close to the modern amount of ice on Earth, show rates of up to 1 to 1.5 metres per century.”

The findings could help refine climate modeling projections of sea level rise, said co-author Professor Eelco Rohling.

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