SEA-LEVEL CHANGE DURING THE LAST 2000 YEARS IN SOUTHERN CONNECTICUT

Climate and sea-level reconstructions encompassing the past 2000 years provide a pre anthropogenic context for current and projected sea-level rise. Our understanding of sea-level variability during this period is limited and the response to known climate deviations such as the Medieval Climate Anomaly, Little Ice Age and 20th century warming is unknown. We present a new sea-level reconstruction from southern Connecticut that spans the last ~2200 years. It was developed from basal salt-marsh sediment in direct contact with a bedrock outcrop making the new record free from any influence of compaction. The elevation of former sea level is estimated using salt-marsh foraminifera. Sample age is constrained using a composite chronology (¹⁴C, stable lead isotopes, mercury, ²¹⁰Pb, ¹³⁷Cs and pollen) and a probabilistic age model. Since ~200BC relative sea level has risen by approximately 2.3m. Following correction for glacio isostatic adjustment the new record shows deviations from a linear trend. The most pronounce of these changes is an acceleration to modern rates of rise in the late 19^th century that is coincident with other proxy records from the U.S. Atlantic coast and global tide gauge compilations.