Coastal planners take heed: Newly uncovered evidence from fossil corals found on an island chain in the Indian Ocean suggests that sea levels could rise even more steeply in our warming world than previously thought.
Coastal planners take heed: Newly uncovered evidence from fossil corals found on an island chain in the Indian Ocean suggests that sea levels could rise even more steeply in our warming world than previously thought.
“This is not good news for us as we head into the future,” says Andrea Dutton, a professor of geoscience at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Dutton and her PhD student Karen Vyverberg at the University of Florida led an international collaboration that included researchers from University of Sydney, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Victoria University of Wellington and University of Massachusetts Amherst who analyzed fossilized corals discovered in the Seychelles islands.
These particular fossils provided an exceptional opportunity for the researchers to reconstruct past sea levels. That’s in part because they’re remnants of coral species that only live in shallows very near the sea surface. Their tropical location also means they were far away from any past ice sheets, which have a more pronounced effect on local sea levels.
Read more at: University of Wisconsin-Madison
Fossil coral exposed in a limestone outcrop above present sea level in the Seychelles. (Photo Credit: Belinda Dechnik)
