Sea Level and Ice Sheet Stability During Past (and Future) Warming

Event format: Online or in person

Wednesday, October 11, 2023. 11:30 AM. Sea Level and Ice Sheet Stability During Past (and Future) Warming. Jacky Austermann, Columbia University. Sponsored by Rutgers Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. The virtual meeting can be found here.

Abstract: Past warm periods serve as testing grounds to explore how major ice sheets respond to warming. In my work I work on reconstructing sea level during past warm periods including the Last interglacial (~125 ka), the mid-Pliocene warm period (~3 Ma), and the early Pliocene (~5 Ma) when temperatures were warmer than today (0.5-1.5 ºC, 2-3 ºC, ~4ºC relative to pre-industrial, respectively). In this talk I will first focus on a Last Interglacial sea level record from the Bahamas. I will show the stratigraphic evidence including new U-Th coral ages and describe how we can leverage the spatial extent of the data to constrain the contribution of glacial isostatic adjustment to past sea level. I will further present ongoing research that integrates this finding with observations from sites around the globe to fingerprint the melt history of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets during the last interglacial. Lastly, I will highlight a few studies that constrain sea level during earlier warm periods and stress the importance of understanding mantle convection for these reconstructions. I will end by showing that the results from all time periods combined may paint a coherent picture of ice sheet sensitivity and explore what this means for ice sheet processes and future sea level rise.

Location: Online or in person in Wright Auditorium on Busch Campus