Minimal late Holocene sea level rise in the Chukchi Sea: arctic insensitivity to global change?

• Main Authors: Owen K. Mason A, James W. Jordan B
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2001
• Subjects: Sea level change; Late Holocene; Global change; Alaska; Arctic; Chukchi Sea; Barrow; Chukchi; Seward Peninsula
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.512.8875; http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPol/EnviroPhilo/Mason.pdf

Long-term estimates of sea level rise are essential for planning responses to anthropogenic global change. The tectonically stable, unglaciated eastern Chukchi Sea coast has numerous depositional environments for extracting long-term records in the absence of tide gauge data. Radiocarbon ages (n = 27) on paleo-marsh beds along several Seward Peninsula lagoons allows the reconstruction of sea level over the last 6000 years in northwest Alaska and indicate a modest sea level rise, 1.5 m, or 0.27 mm year 1. Neoglacial (1600–200 cal BC) storm deposits from Kotzebue Sound to Barrow are 1–1.5 m below modern storm surge elevations, supporting the inference of a lower eustatic sea level. Our data-constrained sea level curve establishes that the Chukchi Sea responds at a considerably slower rate than other regions of the world, supporting recent models of isostatic