Minimal late Holocene sea level rise in the Chukchi Sea: arctic insensitivity to global change?

Abstract

Long-term estimates of sea level rise are essential for planning responses to anthropogenic global change. The tectonically stable, unglaciated eastern Chukchi Sea coast has numerous depositional environments for extracting long-term records in the absence of tide gauge data. Radiocarbon ages ( n=27) on paleo-marsh beds along several Seward Peninsula lagoons allows the reconstruction of sea level over the last 6000 years in northwest Alaska and indicate a modest sea level rise, ∼1.5 m, or 0.27 mm year −1. Neoglacial (1600–200 cal BC) storm deposits from Kotzebue Sound to Barrow are 1–1.5 m below modern storm surge elevations, supporting the inference of a lower eustatic sea level. Our data-constrained sea level curve establishes that the Chukchi Sea responds at a considerably slower rate than other regions of the world, supporting recent models of isostatic response for the arctic.