Postglacial sea-level change on a rotating Earth: first results from a gravitationally self-consistent sea-level equation

Abstract

We present and solve a gravitationally self-consistent sea-level equation which governs postglacial sea-level variations on a spherically symmetric, self-gravitating, viscoelastic and rotating Earth. We find that the inclusion of a glacio-isostatically induced rotational excitation can significantly affect previous predictions of both present-day sea-level rates and postglacial sea-level histories which were based on a theory that assumed a non-rotating Earth model. To illustrate, we consider present-day sea-level rates (and tide-gauge corrections) along the US east coast, and relative sea-level curves in the far field of the late Pleistocene ice sheets.