Probabilistic Estimation of mid-Holocene global mean sea level

Rising sea levels in the 21^st century threaten coastal communities with inundation, yet projecting the relative and global mean sea level response to climate warming is complex. Lack of contemporary analogues for future climate dynamics has turned attention to periods in the geologic past that can illuminate how Earth’s climate system reacts to temperature forcing. Recent evidence suggests the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets may have retreated inland of their present-day extents during the mid-late Holocene (~8-3 ka), then readvanced until the pre-industrial. These findings have highlighted the utility of the mid-Holocene—when summer temperatures in the northern hemisphere may have neared 4 degrees hotter than preindustrial levels—as a partial analogue for future warming.

Here we present a new probabilistic estimate of mid-Holocene global mean sea level (GMSL). We construct an ensemble of global ice sheet reconstructions for the last 80 kyr that spans a range of possible mid-Holocene GMSL scenarios. We predict relative sea level from each model accounting for glacial isostatic adjustment and using a range of solid earth structures. We then compare these predictions to 10,733 postglacial sea-level indicators and weigh the GMSL curves from each ice model using data-model fits. The constraints placed on mid-Holocene global mean sea level clarify climate dynamics during this critical interval in Earth’s recent history, and enable new estimates of post-glacial Antarctic ice volume and the likelihood of mid-Holocene West Antarctic ice sheet readvance.