Reviewing Last interglacial (MIS 5e, 125 ka) sea-level indicators from South Asia and the South China Sea

The World Atlas of Last Interglacial Shorelines (WALIS) is a comprehensive, community-driven, open-access database that compiles and holds the global records of sea-level proxies and associated dated samples from the Last Interglacial period (LIG, Marine Isotope Stage MIS 5e, ~125,000 years ago). Despite its extensive and comprehensive coverage, the available knowledge and understanding of sea level fluctuations during LIG in South Asia, the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, and the South China Sea remain unavailable on the WALIS dataset. These regions are critical for understanding relative sea-level changes due to their unique geological, tectonic, and climatic settings, such as the active tectonics of the Makran coast, the tropical environments of Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, and the sediment-rich deltas of South Asia. This work aims to update WALIS by integrating available literature with detailed work on sea level indicators from these areas, focusing on marine terraces, raised shorelines, sedimentary records, and geochemical proxies. Including South Asian and Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, and the South China Sea LIG data to WALIS will significantly enhance the database's regional and global utility, offering new insights into glacial-isostatic adjustments, monsoon-driven sedimentation, and the interplay of climatic and tectonic forces during the Last Interglacial. This new standardized regional database will be useful for both local and global paleoclimate studies, improving our understanding of past and future sea-level dynamics and coastal geomorphology.

This presentation is a contribution to the WARMCOASTS project, which has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement n. 802414)