Eemian - Sea Level

Sea Level

Sea level at peak was probably 4 to 6m (13 to 20 feet) higher than today (references in Overpeck et al., 2006), with much of this extra water coming from Greenland but some likely to have come from Antarctica. Global mean sea surface temperatures are thought to have been higher than in the Holocene, but not by enough to explain the rise in sea level through thermal expansion alone, and so melting of polar ice caps must also have occurred. Because of the sea level drop since the Eemian, exposed fossil coral reefs are common in the tropics, especially in the Caribbean and along the Red Sea coastlines. These reefs often contain internal erosion surfaces showing significant sea level instability during the Eemian.

A 2007 study found evidence that the Greenland ice core site Dye 3 was glaciated during the Eemian, which implies that Greenland could have contributed at most 2 m (6.6 ft) to sea level rise. Scandinavia was an island due to the inundation of vast areas of northern Europe and the West Siberian Plain.