Nineteenth and twentieth century sea-level changes in Tasmania and New Zealand

Gehrels, W. Roland, Callard, S. Louise, Moss, Patrick T., Marshall, William A., Blaauw, Maarten, Hunter, John, Milton, J. Andrew and Garnett, Mark H. (2012) Nineteenth and twentieth century sea-level changes in Tasmania and New Zealand. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 315-316, 94-102. (doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2011.08.046).

Abstract

Positive deviations from linear sea-level trends represent important climate signals if they are persistent and geographically widespread. This paper documents rapid sea-level rise reconstructed from sedimentary records obtained from salt marshes in the Southwest Pacific region (Tasmania and New Zealand). A new late Holocene relative sea-level record from eastern Tasmania was dated by AMS14C (conventional, high precision and bomb-spike), 137Cs, 210Pb, stable Pb isotopic ratios, trace metals, pollen and charcoal analyses. Palaeosea-level positions were determined by foraminiferal analyses. Relative sea level in Tasmania was within half a metre of present sea level for much of the last 6000 yr. Between 1900 and 1950 relative sea level rose at an average rate of 4.2 ± 0.1 mm/yr. During the latter half of the 20th century the reconstructed rate of relative sea-level rise was 0.7 ± 0.6 mm/yr. Our study is consistent with a similar pattern of relative sea-level change recently reconstructed for southern New Zealand. The change in the rate of sea-level rise in the SW Pacific during the early 20th century was larger than in the North Atlantic and could suggest that northern hemisphere land-based ice was the most significant melt source for global sea-level rise.

This record has no associated files available for download.

Contributors

Author: J. Andrew Milton

Download statistics