Global and regional sea level proxy-model consistency over the Common Era
Abstract
Salt marsh proxy records along the North American Atlantic coast reveal sea level variability over the past 3000 years reflecting large-scale changes in climate and ocean circulation. Over the period corresponding to the CMIP5/PMIP3 Last Millennium experiments (850-1850 CE), these reconstructions suggest four distinct multi-century periods of sea level variability in which global mean sea level varied by ±8 cm, with larger amplitude, regional, dynamic sea level changes that are often out-of-phase. Here, we analyze Last Millennium simulations from six modeling centers to determine whether the timing, magnitude, wavelength and spatial patterns of regional and global sea level variability are consistent across models and with the proxy record.
Although most models show centennial-timescale variability in global mean and regional sea level, and a few models replicate the timing and phasing of anomalies North of Cape Hatteras, the amplitude of these anomalies are far smaller than inferred from proxies. We offer possible explanations for model-proxy mismatch, and suggest numerical simulations and analyses that might help to assess their validity.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016AGUFMPP51E..08L
- Keywords:
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- 3305 Climate change and variability;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSESDE: 1620 Climate dynamics;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 1630 Impacts of global change;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 4928 Global climate models;
- PALEOCEANOGRAPHY