Abstract
Because global sea level during the last interglacial (LIG; 130–115 ka) was higher than today, the LIG is a useful analogue for improving predictions of future sea level rise. Here, we synthesize sea level proxies for the LIG in the glaciated Northern Hemisphere for inclusion in the World Atlas of Last Interglacial Shorelines (WALIS) database. We describe 82 sites from Russia, northern Europe, Greenland and North America from a variety of settings, including boreholes, riverbank exposures and along coastal cliffs. Marine sediments at these sites were constrained to the LIG using a variety of radiometric methods (radiocarbon, U-Series dating, K-Ar dating), non-radiometric methods (amino acid dating, luminescence methods, and electron spin resonance, tephrochronology) as well as various stratigraphic and palaeoenvironmental approaches. As the areas in this database were covered by ice sheets from the penultimate glaciation and were affected by glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA), most of the proxies show that sea level was much higher than present during the LIG. Many of the sites show evidence of regression due sea level fall due to GIA uplift, and some also show fluctuations that may reflect regrowth of continental ice or increased influence of the global sea level signal. The database is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5602212 (Dalton et al., 2021).
Highlights
During the last interglacial (LIG) between 130 and 115 ka, 30 temperatures were warmer than today by up to 5°C in some regions of the northern Hemisphere (Dahl-Jensen et al, 2013), Data and global sea levels were 5 to 10 m higher (Dutton and Lambeck, 2012)
The LIG represents a useful analogue for understanding the behavior of large continental ice sheets in a warming world, which is key for improving prediction of 35 future melting of the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets and concomitant sea level rise (Slater et al, 2021)
The World Atlas of Last Interglacial Shorelines (WALIS) is a standardized database that has been created to archive global sea level sites constrained to the LIG
Summary
During the last interglacial (LIG) between 130 and 115 ka (peak interglacial at 123 ka; Lisiecki and Raymo, 2005), 30 temperatures were warmer than today by up to 5°C in some regions of the northern Hemisphere (Dahl-Jensen et al, 2013), Data and global sea levels were 5 to 10 m higher (Dutton and Lambeck, 2012). Isostatic recovery is sometimes preserved as a sequence of deep water, shallowing and shoreline, deltaic, estuarine depositional settings Such LIG sites were subject to considerable erosion from subsequent glaciations (notably, during MIS 4 and MIS 2; Batchelor et al, 2019) and are only sporadically preserved. These sites are unsuitable as precise indicators of RSL and 60 are excluded from the WALIS database. The LIG is known regionally as the Kazantsevo interglacial (Siberia; here redefined as Karginsky, 65 per Astakhov 2013), the Mikulino interglacial (Russia), the Eemian (western, central and northern Europe), the Ipswichian (United Kingdom), the Langelandselv interglaciation (Greenland) and the Sangamonian (North America)
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