Aslak Grinsted, J. C. Moore, S. Jevrejeva

Climate Dynamics

Published date January 6, 2009

Reconstructing sea level from paleo and projected temperatures 200 to 2100 AD

  • Uses a physically plausible four parameter linear response equation to relate 2,000 years of global temperatures and sea leve
  • Estimates likelihood distributions of equation parameters using Monte Carlo inversion, which then allows visualization of past and future sea level scenarios
  • Finds that the model has good predictive power when calibrated on the pre-1990 period and validated against the high rates of sea level rise from the satellite altimetry
  • Finds that, over the last 2,000 years minimum sea level (−19 to −26 cm) occurred around 1730 ad, maximum sea level (12–21 cm) around 1150 ad