MAPPING SEA-LEVEL CHANGE IN TIME, SPACE, AND PROBABILITY (Invited Presentation)

As recorded instrumentally and reconstructed from geological proxies, sea levels have risen and fallen throughout Earth’s history, on timescales ranging from minutes to millions of years. Sea-level projections depend on establishing a robust relationship between sea level and climate forcing, but the vast majority of instrumental records contain less than 60 years of data, which are from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This brief instrumental period captures only a single climate mode of rising temperatures and sea level within a baseline state that is climatically mild by geological standards. Complementing the instrumental records, geological proxies provide valuable archives of the rates of sea-level response to past climate variability, including periods of more extreme global mean surface temperature

We review the current methodologies and data sources used to reconstruct the history of sea-level change over geological (Pliocene, Last Interglacial, and Holocene) and instrumental (tide-gauge and satellite altimetry) eras, and the tools used to project the future spatial and temporal evolution of sea level. We summarize the understanding of the future evolution of sea level over the near (through 2050), medium (2100), and long (post-2100) terms. Using case studies from Singapore and New Jersey, we illustrate the ways in which current methodologies and historical data sources can constrain future projections, and how accurate projections can motivate the development of new sea-level research questions across relevant timescales.