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Sea-level rise at the end of the last deglaciation dominated by North American ice sheets

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Abstract

The rapid transformation of the ocean–atmosphere–cryosphere system during the last deglaciation holds clues that may be useful to understand climate change during this century and beyond. Within this context, sea-level change connects the climate system components, but the limited temporal resolution and spatial distribution of relative sea-level records has hindered progress towards closing the ice sheet–sea-level budget since the Last Glacial Maximum. Here we present a relative sea-level record, compiled using radiocarbon-dated basal peat, from the Mississippi Delta stretching back to ~10,000 years ago and combine it with the best available relative sea-level data worldwide for the final episode of the last deglaciation (9,000–7,000 years ago). Geophysical modelling shows that these precise data constraints favour approximately 14 m of ice melt in North America through this interval, 4–10 m greater than previously estimated, and at least three times greater than the Antarctic contribution. Our results call for a major revision of the deglacial ice history with implications for, among others, collapse of the saddle connecting two ice domes over Hudson Bay, the associated abrupt cooling ~8,200 years ago and the sensitivity of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation to freshwater forcing.

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Fig. 1: Mississippi Delta early Holocene RSL record.
Fig. 2: Comparison of early Holocene RSL records.
Fig. 3: Comparison of observed and modelled rates of RSL change between 9 and 7 ka.
Fig. 4: North American and Antarctic contributions to global sea-level rise and FWF to the North Atlantic Ocean during the final stages of the last deglaciation.

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Data availability

All the RSL data used in the analysis are available via Research Square at https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-4138402/v1 and in the Supplementary Data 1. The T2012, NAIS-X and NAISset-E ice models are available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15800380 (ref. 97). The AIS ice models are available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15811405 (ref. 98).

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the US National Science Foundation (grants OCE-1502588 to T.E.T. and OCE-1502753 to B.E.R.). Additionally, a Vokes Fellowship from Tulane University supported U.M. We thank the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Louisiana State University for access to their Geoprobe. D. Weathers, D. Di Leonardo, K. Jankowski and C. Esposito assisted with collecting sediment cores, and M. Ramirez assisted with RTK elevation measurements. We are grateful to J. Southon and his staff at the University of California, Irvine, for carrying out the 14C dating. We thank G. Li and S.-Y. Yu for translating Chinese publications, and A. Hasan for help with some of the figures. This is a contribution to the PALSEA programme and IGCP 725 (Forecasting coastal change).

Author information

Author notes

  1. Udita Mukherjee

    Present address: Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, USA

    Udita Mukherjee, Lael Vetter, Elena Steponaitis & Torbjörn E. Törnqvist

  2. Department of Geosciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Lael Vetter

  3. Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

    Glenn A. Milne

  4. Department of Physics and Physical Oceanography, Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

    Lev Tarasov

  5. Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Maynooth University, Kildare, Ireland

    Niamh Cahill

  6. ICARUS, Maynooth University, Kildare, Ireland

    Niamh Cahill

  7. Defence Research & Development Canada, Suffield Research Centre, Suffield, Alberta, Canada

    Benoit S. Lecavalier

  8. College of Marine Science, University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, FL, USA

    Brad E. Rosenheim

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Contributions

T.E.T., G.A.M. and B.E.R. conceived the study. U.M. evaluated global RSL datasets, synthesized RSL histories, performed the data–model comparison and composed the initial manuscript draft. L.V. collected Mississippi Delta sediment cores and prepared 14C samples for dating; E.S. collected additional sediment cores and 14C samples. L.V. and B.E.R. carried out the δ13C measurements. L.T. and B.S.L. provided the ice-sheet chronologies; G.A.M. provided the GIA models. N.C. provided the code for the Bayesian modelling of the RSL histories. U.M., L.V. and T.E.T. created the figures and wrote the manuscript. U.M., T.E.T., G.A.M., L.V. and L.T. discussed the results. All authors contributed to the editing of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Udita Mukherjee.

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Nature Geoscience thanks Szymon Uścinowicz and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editor: James Super, in collaboration with the Nature Geoscience team.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Relative sea-level (RSL) data selection procedure.

Flow chart outlining the criteria used to evaluate global RSL data for potential inclusion in this study.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Cross section with 14 cores used for the new relative sea-level record from the eastern Mississippi Delta.

Correlation line represents the top of the paleosol that overlies the Pleistocene basement. Ages are (in most cases) weighted means of multiple 14C samples from a given stratigraphic level (all 14 C data are provided in Supplementary Table 1). Ages in black are associated with sea-level index points (bold) or upper limiting data points (not bold); ages in grey cannot be linked to past sea levels due to unsuitable paleoenvironmental conditions, post-depositional sediment compaction, or both. Map data from Atlas, LSU Department of Geography and Anthropology (http://atlas.lsu.edu).

Extended Data Fig. 3 Sea-level equivalent (9-7 ka) melt contribution for the North American (top panel) and Antarctic (bottom panel) ice models used in this study.

Model numbers can be cross-referenced against the ice model IDs used in the corresponding publications (refs. 24,25) and Supplement with details of the ice model ensembles discussed here.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Comparison between the rate of relative sea-level change simulated by 1D and 3D Earth models.

a, Mississippi Delta, b, Yangtze Delta, c, Rhine-Meuse Delta, d, Malay Peninsula. The solid lines show rates generated from the 1D Earth models used in the present study (Extended Data Table 1); the dashed lines show rates generated from six 3D Earth models, with two different global lithosphere models (‘AF’ for the model of Afonso et al. (2018) and ‘YO’ for the model of Yousefi et al. (2021)) and three different seismic models to infer lateral viscosity variations: ‘S40’, ‘SAV’, ‘SEM’(for, respectively, S40RTS, Savani, and SEMUCB-WM1; see Methods for more information).

Extended Data Fig. 5 Data-model misfit calculation for the four study areas based on 1764 different Earth and ice model configurations.

Each GIA model run is colored by its misfit statistic (ϕ(M)) value. The seven Earth models are plotted along the x-axis; the various combinations of ice models (see Methods) are plotted along the y-axis. Each tick mark along the y-axis indicates one NAIS ice model (designated by the runID) combined with the 12 different AIS models.

Extended Data Fig. 6 Holocene tidal range change in the four study areas.

The modern data are from Admiralty Tide Tables, older data from paleotidal models. In the Mississippi and Rhine-Meuse deltas, the paleo-indicative range (IR) of samples older than 8 ka was calculated by increasing the present-day IR by a factor of 1.5. In the case of the Yangtze Delta and Malay Peninsula (including Singapore), for RSL samples older than 8 ka, we have increased the present-day IR by a factor of 1.5 to calculate the paleo-IR and by a factor of 1.1 for samples younger than 8 ka.

Extended Data Table 1 Earth model parameters adopted for the glacial isostatic adjustment modelling
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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Notes and Supplementary Tables 1 and 2.

Supplementary Data 1

RSL data used in the study.

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Mukherjee, U., Vetter, L., Milne, G.A. et al. Sea-level rise at the end of the last deglaciation dominated by North American ice sheets. Nat. Geosci. (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-025-01806-0

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